China sells 20,000 t of greensteel slab to Italy
Chinese steelmaker HBIS has traded up to 20,000 t of hydrogen-based green steel slab to Italy, with the material to be shipped before September, market participants told McCloskey on 22 July.
HBIS released a statement on 18 July describing the sale of a non-specific 10,000 t of “hydrogen metallurgical green steel” to an Italian end-user, cited as bearing a 50% reduction in embedded carbon content.
Through investigation with market sources, McCloskey now understands the exporter agreed additional volumes – for a total of around 20,000 t of steel slab – all sold to Italy. Approximately half of this material, or 10,000 t, has been confirmed as purchased by an Italian re-roller. The remaining order allocation has not been confirmed, though some in the market attributed the rest of the load to the same re-roller in a further 10,000 t deal.
Sources close to the deal describe the CO2 content of the material as around 0.5 per tonne of steel – competitive against even European electric-arc furnace (EAF) producers – with slab of comparable CO2 content said to be almost impossible to source within Europe at present due to a lack of relevant offerings from EAF-based mills, and in increasing demand due to the upcoming definitive stage of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).
“It seems everybody is searching for slab [from alternative sources] now due to CBAM,” a distributor source said.
Even if calculated on default EAF values for the CBAM, which enters its duty-liability phase from January 2026, sources consider HBIS’ hydrogen-produced slab as preferable to other exporters that predominantly operate via the blast furnace route, able to attract lower CBAM duties due to its reduced emissions balance.
Despite the material’s marketability, McCloskey understands that the deal did not incorporate a significant green steel premium, traded at only around a 2-3% premium to current slab prices, in the vicinity of $500/t CFR Italy. In contrast, green hot-rolled coil (HRC) sales to end-users in the European domestic market can reach premiums of up to EUR200/t. McCloskey’s reduced carbon marker, which calculates the value of one unit of reduced carbon in reference to all surveyed green HRC premiums in the week to its publication, currently stands at just under 11% of the spot HRC price in Northwest Europe.
HBIS did not give detail of the production route of the cited 10,000 t order in its public statement, but McCloskey’s Asia-specific Green Steel Profile describes HBIS’ Zhangzuan Technology (ZXHT) site as utilising a hydrogen-rich coke oven gas direct-reduced-iron (DRI) plant to feed the steelmaker’s EAF production of low-carbon steel.
Both market sources and HBIS’ press release confirm that the steelmaker is targeting the European market with its low-carbon offerings, taking advantage of emerging arbitrage opportunities resulting from the upcoming full implementation of CBAM, potentially compounded if relevant carbon costs have already been paid domestically under China’s own Emissions Trading System.
Benjamin Steven Journalist, Steel
Maria Tanatar Associate Director, Steel and Green Steel
