European heavy plate round-up: EU plate producers seek higher prices on rising costs
European heavy plate producers have been targeting higher prices in the week to 7 November, amid rising costs and reduced availability of imported material.
EU authorities have proposed new tariff-rated quotas, both reducing the existing quotas and increasing duties. As a result, buyers have been showing increased interest in domestic plate as import volumes are expected to drop in 2026.
Italian re-rollers have been trading heavy plate at EUR620-640/t ex-works. As transaction prices started to approach the current target price of EUR650/t ex-works, market sources reported new price ideas of suppliers at EUR670-700/t ex-works for the first quarter of next year.
European re-rollers rely on imported slab, and the implementation of the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) from 2026 will result in higher costs. Sources estimated that CBAM duty for imported slab would reach around EUR50/t, making an increase in finished steel prices critical for the mills.
Offers of imported slab from China and Vietnam have been heard at $520/t CFR Italy, and exporters were ready to grant discounts of around $10/t. But re-rollers in Italy have been aiming for maximum prices of $500/t CFR, taking into the account the additional CBAM costs.
Some sources reported deals for semi-finished products from Brazil at $500/t CFR Italy, but the supplier is trying to increase the prices.
Adding pressure on re-rollers, supply of imported slab will be reduced following implementation of the 19th round of sanctions against Russia adopted in the EU last week including measures against Evraz PLC, a UK-headquartered company with core steel manufacturing and mining assets in Russia. Some re-rollers will have to find alternative slab sources, which most likely will be more costly.
In Germany, prices have recovered over the week, with mills offering plate at EUR710-720/t ex-works.
Re-rollers from both Denmark and Czech Republic have offered plate at EUR680/t ex-works.
| Weekly European heavy plate, slab and green steel | |||||
| Unit | Term | 07-Nov-25 | Change | ||
| Weekly heavy plate | |||||
| Northwest Europe ex-works heavy plate | EUR/t | EX-WORKS | 710.00 | 10.00 | |
| Germany delivered heavy plate (Northwest Europe) | EUR/t | DEL | 730.00 | 10.00 | |
| Italy ex-works heavy plate | EUR/t | EX-WORKS | 645.00 | 0.00 | |
| Weekly steel slab | |||||
| Italy CFR slab | $/t | CFR | 510.00 | -5.00 | |
| Weekly green steel | |||||
| Green heavy plate premium (scopes 1-3 CO2 under 1t) | EUR/t | 25.00 | 0.00 | ||
Maria Tanatar Associate Director, Steel and Green Steel
Benjamin Steven Journalist, Steel
European heavy steel plate prices largely steady despite upward pressure in Italy
“Although these levels have not yet been realised in current spot transactions for the remainder of 2025,” a buyer said.
Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe was €590-620 ($685-719) per tonne on Thursday, unchanged week on week.
Transactions at €620-630 per tonne exw were reported in the week, but the data was received after the pricing session had ended and so were not included in Fastmarkets’ final assessment.
In Northern Europe, domestic commodity-grade steel plate prices narrowed down in the week to Thursday amid ongoing muted trade.
Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Northern Europe was €650-680 per tonne on Thursday, narrowing down by €10 per tonne from €650-690 per tonne a week earlier.
Steel plate was imported in Germany at about €700 per tonne delivered, sources said.
And some market participants said that sentiment had recently improved in anticipation that prices and demand will be bolstered by the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and safeguarding reforms.
“Sentiment remains cautiously firm, with Northern European producers already signaling a €20 per tonne price increase for 2026 production, suggesting confidence in steady demand and tighter supply expectations going forward,” a source told Fastmarkets.
Activity remained limited in Northern Europe, however, amid ongoing weak demand in the region.
Special-grade plate pricing stabilises in NW Europe
Whilst the demand for commodity plate in northwestern Europe is not recovering and prices remain at a low, speciality plate fares somewhat better, market participants say.
In comparison with commodity grades S235 and S355, which easily shed €60/tonne ($70/t) between April and now, boiler plate suffered only half that drop.
“Boiler-grade plate P265GH lost maybe €20-30 during that period, and has been relatively stable recently,” one German buyer tells Kallanish.
Offers of commodity grades still keep softening somewhat to lure customers in an ongoing lull of demand, but boiler grade plate keeps it price level, that source observes. He sees that level at around €800/t delivered ($938/t), a price confirmed by a manager at another large distributor group.
The price applies to the typical German mills specialising in higher grades, and ordering from other European countries could make sense, but not necessarily. The first buyer tells of a recent delivery from a Czech mill to a Czech customer at €725. Deliveries from there to German destinations can be a good option – especially in eastern locations, but probably not to France or Benelux
“You may have to look at availability and lead times. And the origin of the slabs: Are they Russian?” the first buyer cautions. He is used to work with German mills, where the prices may be higher, but the risk factor lower.
At the MBI Stahltag cinference in mid-September, Salzgitter manager Sebastion Bross made the optimistic prediction that expansion of wind power plants could lift the annual plate demand from now 2.4 million tonnes to 2.8mt by 2030.
The distributor’s manager, however, is not so sure the development of wind powerwill benefit domestic mills: “Aren’t towers made in Asia mostly?”
Christian Koehl Germany
EU heavy plate round-up: European heavy plate prices stable on seasonal slowdown
Summer holidays largely neutered any potential for price movement across the European heavy plate markets in the week to 8 August, with McCloskey’s sources discussing developments in the segment’s low-carbon offerings.
The Northwest European spot market was working with prices between EUR660-690/t ex-works for s235 grade heavy plate – while the re-roller heavy Italian market lags, cited between EUR590-630/t ex-works.
Input prices for Italian re-rollers are increasing however, potentially lifting existing price floors in southern Europe, with import slab offers heard slightly higher at $510-515/t ex-Asia and Brazil, considered sourceable at a $500/t CFR minimum. Recent US tariff intensifications were said to be a primary factor in the increased availability of Brazilian-origin slabs – also heard purchased in strong volumes from German integrated producers recently to stockpile ahead of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism’s definitive stage in January.
McCloskey’s conversations with sources largely surrounded the increased visibility of low-carbon heavy plate in Europe in lieu of usual market activity during the holiday period, A Bulgarian electric-arc furnace (EAF) producer is reportedly asking for a EUR100/t premium for its certified green heavy plate production, with this target matched in the market by other existing EAF plate producers such as in Slovenia or Macedonia.
Market participants did not see much chance of achieving EUR100/t premia for low-carbon plate sales, perceiving the majority of relevant deals from the EAF mills as trading without any – or a very minimal – green premium. Where premiums are negotiated, volumes were said to be small, with purchase prices specific to the budget of the dependent project and rarely exceeding green plate premiums of EUR50/t – considered by distributors to be a more realistic estimation of the low-carbon value-add.
Maria Tanatar Associate Director, Steel and Green Steel
Benjamin Steven Journalist, Steel
Steel heavy plate prices remain flat across Europe on poor demand
Trading activity in the Italian market was dull, with mainly hand-to-mouth bookings reported in the past week.
Achievable prices for commodity-grade steel heavy plate in Italy were estimated by buyers at €630-650 ($716-739) per tonne ex-works, against offers at €660-670 per tonne for April-May rolling.
Deals were reported at €640-650 per tonne ex-works.
Some mills were mulling higher prices for May-June rolling, around €680-700 per tonne ex-works, but buyers said that such prices were only possible for project business and were “totally unachievable” in spot sales.
The price of slab feedstock for plate production was stable around $500-520 per tonne CIF, with no grounds to raise plate prices, and unsupportive demand, a buyers source said.
As a result, Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe, on Wednesday was €640-650 per tonne, unchanged since mid-February.
June-shipment heavy plate from Asia was offered to Italy at €580-590 per tonne CFR.
An offer of s355 heavy plate from India was available at $680 per tonne FCA at Antwerp. This price was, however, deemed too high by European buyers.
Market sources also said that there were fewer offers of commodity grade heavy plate offers from South Korea, after new safeguards were announced. South Korean suppliers were heard to be focusing on premium plate deliveries for use in making wind-towers.
Northern Europe
In Northern Europe, the situation was similar, with traded volumes in the spot market being low, market sources said.
One German producer, which traditionally focuses on project business, was offering heavy steel plate with lead times around six weeks at €750-790 per tonne ex-works. But this price was not considered workable for the spot market.
Another German supplier maintained its offer price for steel plate at €690-720 per tonne ex-works from one location, and at €680-700 from another.
Buyer sources estimated achievable prices for commodity grade heavy plate, such as s235 and s275, in the range of €680-690 per tonne, even from suppliers which normally sought higher prices.
As a result, Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Northern Europe, was €680-700 per tonne on Wednesday, stable week on week.
Italian steel plate prices in limbo with insufficient demand
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.
European heavy steel plate market restarts on quiet note; prices hold
In Italy, the market restarted on a quite note after winter holiday stoppages, sources said.
“The past two weeks the market was on pause. We’ve just came back from holidays, and so did the customers,” a mill source in Italy told Fastmarkets. “The real negotiations [for plate sales] are only about to start.”
Italian plate producers were trying to increase prices for new rolling and were targeting offers of €650 ($671) per tonne ex-works for first-quarter production.
Buyer sources estimated tradeable values at €630-640 per tonne ex-works in the week to Wednesday, while mill sources claimed that €640-650 per tonne ex-works was “the minimal level that were ready to sell at, considering high input costs,” Fastmarkets heard.
As a result, Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe was €630-640 per tonne on Wednesday, unchanged since December 18, 2024.
“Even the most aggressive suppliers [of plate] were seeking higher prices, because of the high costs of slab and electricity,” a buyer source said.
In Italy, electricity prices in January were around €138 per MWh, up from a monthly average of €135 per MWh in December 2024 and €130 per MWh in November 2024, according to Italy’s exchange for electricity and natural gas spot trading, Gestore Mercati Energetici (GME). In January 2024, electricity prices in Italy averaged €99 per MWh.
Slab, the key feedstock for plate production, was offered to Italy in a range of $505-530 per tonne CFR from Southeast Asia and China.
Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel slab import, cfr Italy was $480-530 per tonne on January 3.
In the week commencing January 6, sources reported no fresh offers from Russian suppliers, which usually represent the lower end of the price range.
Northern Europe
Trading in the spot plate market in Northern Europe was also slow, and industry sources expect more clarity in the coming weeks, when more customers return to the market after a holiday break.
“The market has not fully restarted yet. We expect no major changes until end-January,” a German buyer said.
“The market is as sleepy as before the holidays,” a second buyer said.
As a result, Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Northern Europe was €650-680 per tonne on Wednesday, unchanged since December 4, 2024.
Buyer estimates of the achievable price for commodity-grade heavy plate were heard at €650-660 per tonne ex-works against the offers of €670-680 per tonne ex-works from German suppliers.
A re-roller in the Czech Republic was offering S275 grade plate at €670 per tonne ex-works, but mainly to locations in Central Europe, compared to €630-650 per tonne before the winter holidays.
Bulgarian producers were aiming for €670-680 per tonne ex-works for the same material, compared to €650 per tonne ex-works last month.
Jindal Steel acquires Czech Republic’s Vítkovice Steel
The acquisition received the green light from the Czech Republic’s Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) on December 20, 2024, with the change of ownership effective as of January 1 2025, according to documents seen by Fastmarkets.
“We are convinced that this will strengthen the company and the Czech steel industry. The new industrial owner will bring stabilization to the company and, above all, development in the form of investments in production technologies, sharing foreign know-how and moving towards ecologically produced low-emissions steel,” Radek Strouhal, CEO of Vitkovice steel, said in a press release.
Located in Ostrava, Vitkovice is Czech Republic’s sole producer of heavy steel plate, with capacity to produce 800,000 tonnes per year of the material. The company has operated as a re-roller since end-2015, procuring slabs from third parties in Russia, Asia, and the European Union.
Semis supply
Vitkovice has been relying mainly on imports of Russia-origin slabs, sources said, but it plans to procure more semis from its new owner moving forward.
“We plan to get slabs from Jindal in the next years,” a spokesperson for Vitkovice told Fastmarkets, adding that the facility currently has other suppliers.
The new owner has no immediate plans to install a new electric-arc furnace (EAF) and resuming internal slab production, Fastmarkets understands.
Vítkovice is Jindal Group’s first European acquisition. The parties had been negotiating since the spring of 2024, Fastmarkets reported.
Jindal International Group plans to invest up to €150 million ($155.4 million) in the development of the Ostrava facility in the coming years, mainly in the expansion of its capacity and the production of products with higher added value.
Vitkovic’s previous ownership turmoil
Vitkovice was owned by Russian company Evraz Plc until 2014.
Evraz Plc sold its Evraz Vitkovice Steel AS subsidiary to a group of Cyprus-registered private investment companies for $89 million in 2014.
The ownership of the mill became uncertain after that. Several sources told Fastmarkets at the time that the Cypriot companies were affiliated with Russia, notably VEB bank, and probably also Evraz.
In May 2022, the Czech Republic’s Financial Analytical Office blocked the assets of Vitkovice Steel after having recognized that, behind the Cypriot funds owning Vitkovice Steel, there were Russian owners.
This, however, was denied by the company.
“The company is not owned by Russian entities, it is owned by five multinational investment funds based in Cyprus and owned by people from the countries of the former Soviet Union, but not from Russia,” the Vitkovice’s spokesperson told Fastmarkets at the time.
The suspected ownership link to Russia, which the company repeatedly denied, was not confirmed, which led Czech authorities to close the investigation in July 2024, allowing the negotiations with Jindal to move forward.
Italian plate market enters quiet period with cautious hopes for price recovery in Q1
In Italy, trading picked up slightly in the past week, with buyers finalizing their bookings for the first quarter ahead of the year-end.
But trading was slow in general, and producer sources said they were getting 20-40% fewer orders in November-December compared with the same period last year.
As Fastmarkets reported earlier, Italian plate producers were trying to increase prices for new rolling and were targeting offers of €650 ($682) per tonne ex-works for the first quarter.
Some suppliers said they have had limited success, managing to seal higher prices in bookings with some clients.
But another supplier said that higher prices could have been sealed mainly for project business, while the spot market remained weak.
“For small- and medium-sized businesses, there is a struggle; there is fierce competition downstream. We will see if distributors and steel service centers manage to [increase] prices downstream in the new year,” a supplier source said.
Most buyer sources estimated tradeable prices at no higher than €630 per tonne ex-works in the week to Wednesday, claiming that some suppliers were still accepting lower prices to fill gaps in order books, particularly for commodity grades.
Deals were reported at €630-640 per tonne ex-works during the assessment week.
As a result. Fastmarkets’ weekly price assessment for steel domestic plate, 8-40mm, exw Southern Europe was €630-640 per tonne on Wednesday, narrowing upward by €10 per tonne from €620-640 per tonne on December 11.
Domestic suppliers were taking prolonged production stoppages in December and January, and industry sources expressed hopes that the move might help to balance the market so the Italian rerollers would be able to achieve higher prices in new-year trades.
The recent news about the safeguards review, announced by the European Commission on Tuesday December 17, also sparked some cautious optimism among sellers.
No details have been revealed yet about the potential changes to steel safeguard measures, but sources familiar with the matter said that quarterly quotas for some origins will likely be reduced and/or new individual quotas might be imposed.
Sources suggested that the Commission’s move will further limit appetite for overseas bookings and therefore support a rebound in European prices in the medium to long run.
“We are heading into [an] era of global trade wars and growing protectionism. Looks like reliance on domestic mills will only increase in 2025,” a buyer in Italy said.
Sources said that interest in overseas plate has already been somewhat cooled by talks about a potential anti-dumping investigation, and the recent safeguard news announcement might result in stronger reliance on European plate.
Some suppliers — notably South Korea, Indonesia and India — have significantly increased heavy plate shipments to the EU in 2023-2024.
Notably, in January-October 2024, total quarto plate deliveries from South Korea to the EU amounted to 640,513 tonnes, compared with 618,070 for the entire year of 2023, Global Trader Tracker (GTT) data showed. In 2022, South Korea shipped only 357,504 tonnes of plate to the bloc.
In the first ten months of 2024, India supplied 439,415 tonnes of quarto plate to the bloc, compared with 349,901 tonnes for the entire year of 2023.
In January-October 2024, quarto plate deliveries from Indonesia to the EU stood at 302,109 tonnes, compared with 328,894 for the entire year of 2023.
Offers of February-shipment plate to Italy from South Korea and Indonesia were heard at €570-580 per tonne CFR.
