Steel heavy plate prices remain flat across Europe on poor demand

The steel heavy plate market across Europe has been largely unchanged for several weeks amid subdued trading, and with buyers remaining skeptical about price increases amid insufficient demand, trade sources told Fastmarkets on Wednesday April 16.
Italy
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

Steel heavy plate prices were broadly stable in Italy amid still-muted demand, but some suppliers were considering increases for the second quarter, trade sources told Fastmarkets on Wednesday April 9.

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.

Published by: Julia Bolotova

 

European heavy steel plate market restarts on quiet note; prices hold

Trading remains subdued in the European steel heavy plate market, with mills hoping to achieve higher prices to account for elevated costs, Fastmarkets heard on Wednesday January 8.

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.

Published by: Julia Bolotova

Jindal Steel acquires Czech Republic’s Vítkovice Steel

Indian company Jindal Steel International, part of Jindal Group, acquired 100% of the shares of Czech Republic-based plate producer Vítkovice Steel, Fastmarkets heard on Tuesday January 7.

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.

Published by: Julia Bolotova

Italian plate market enters quiet period with cautious hopes for price recovery in Q1

Italian steel heavy plate prices have been stable to slightly stronger in the week to Wednesday December 18, with hopes for a rebound in the first quarter of 2025 tempered by slow demand, sources told Fastmarkets.

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.

Published by: Julia Bolotova