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.