In Italy, offers for S275 heavy plate were reported by buyers and sellers at €660-670 ($721-732) per tonne ex-works. Order books were quite short, with late-April lead times still available from local suppliers.
Transactions for such material were reported at lower prices of €640-650 per tonne ex-works during the week, Fastmarkets heard.
“Trading is still very limited. The market [for plate] is in some kind of limbo,” a seller in Italy said.
“Buyers are cautious and counting every single tonne they book,” another supplier said.
As a result, Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe, was €640-650 per tonne on Wednesday, unchanged for more than a month.
Meanwhile, overseas suppliers of slab, the key feedstock for plate production, have started to increase their offers.
Overall, the range of offers from Asian suppliers was $520-540 per tonne CIF, with only a few suppliers offering material at $500 per tonne CIF. But it was ”almost impossible” to get thicker, plate-quality slab at such prices, Fastmarkets heard.
Some market sources suggested that Italian mills might try to increase prices to reflect the higher production costs.
But others noted that, due to the depreciation of the US dollar against the euro, rerollers felt comfortable selling plate at €640-650 per tonne ex-works.
The exchange rate was hovering around $1.09 to €1 on March 19, compared with $1.04 to €1 a month earlier.
“Demand is not strong enough to support a [plate] price rise,” a buyer source said.
As for imports, the market remained quiet after the announcement of adjustments to the EU’s safeguard measures in the previous week. These included cuts to certain quarterly allocations for heavy plate and the introduction of a 20% cap per country over the tariff rate quota (TRQ) volume initially available in each quarter.
The most recent deals for May-shipment plate from South Korea to Italy and Spain were agreed at €570-580 per tonne CFR in early March.
One market source reported similar offers for June-shipment plate from South Korea.
From Indonesia, even lower offers were reported for June-shipment plate, at $605 per tonne CFR (€553 per tonne CFR). Market sources said that offers were unchanged in dollar terms, but lower in euros due to the dollar’s depreciation.
