Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe, was unchanged on Wednesday at €640-650 ($709-720) per tonne.
Tradeable prices for commodity-grade steel heavy plate in Italy have been “stuck” at €640-650 per tonne ex-works for some weeks, with market sources reporting tepid demand.
Some local re-rollers still had April production to sell, they added.
“We see mainly hand-to-mouth business these days. Business is slow,” a seller in Italy said.
For May-June rolling, some mills said that they were considering price increases by as much as €20-30 per tonne, citing higher costs of production, because no substantial improvement in demand was expected in the near future.
Some suppliers have already issued new offers at €680-700 per tonne ex-works, compared with €660-670 per tonne ex-works for March-April.
Industry sources, however, felt that such prices were too high for the spot market and were only possible for project business at the moment.
The only supportive factor for the market was limited import availability, while real demand remained slow, trade sources said.
Stronger trade measures would limit imports from third countries to the EU and support domestic prices in the longer run, they added.
Under the new safeguards that came into effect on April 1, there was a newly introduced cap per single country over the tariff rate quota (TRQ) volume initially available in each quarter, set at 20% for heavy plate.
This will affect steel plate imports falling under the “other countries” category. South Korea, Indonesia and India were the major heavy plate suppliers to the EU under that category, offering the most competitive prices, according to market participants in Europe.
“New import orders [of heavy plate] are few to Italy, that’s true. But there are sufficient stocks at ports, available at low prices and with short delivery times,” a buyer source said.
June-shipment heavy plate from Indonesia South Korea was offered to Italy at €580-590 per tonne CFR.
But market sources pointed out that, after the new safeguards were announced, South Korean suppliers limited their offers of commodity grades, focusing on premium plate deliveries for use in making wind-towers.
