Domestic prices for rolled steel products in Europe remained high during the week to Thursday, November 6, boosted by the upcoming EU Carbon Emissions Regulation Mechanism (CBAM), the growing supply of raw materials and reduced competition from imports, Fastmarkets sources said.
Italy
Prices for rolled steel in Italy remained stable during the week until Thursday, with orders placed at 620-630 euros ($715-727) per tonne based on offers at 640-650 euros per tonne, according to sources.
Fastmarkets' weekly price estimate for domestic 8-40 mm thick rolled steel exported to Southern Europe on Thursday was 620-650 euros per ton, unchanged week-to-week.
According to sources, deals were reported last week at a price of 620-640 euros per ton, some heard about a price of 630-650 euros per ton, while offers for raw materials of the S355 brand were received at a price of 670-680 euros per ton with delivery to Italy.
But a source in one of the traders said that the Italian distributors were able to "offer only a small part of their production portfolio for December."
"I haven't heard many offers for January yet," the source said.
A producer source told Fastmarkets that CBAM has had a fundamental impact on the recent growth of the Italian sheet steel market, with further impacts expected later this year due to the reduction of EU duty-free protective quotas in 2026.
A source at the manufacturing company said that the remaining volume of quotas for Russian slab raw materials, which remained at 2.389 million tons, could be significant, since by the end of the year – and before the final stage of CBAM is implemented – if the remaining volumes are cleared in Europe., Russian volumes will provide "a huge and inexpensive buffer for those rollovers that use[Russian slab]."
Plates imported to Europe from Russia are usually cheaper than similar materials from Asia or South America.
The initial duty-free quota available to Russian suppliers was 2.998 million tons for the period from October 1, 2025 to September 30, 2026, 609,449 tons were consumed as of November 6.
But market participants also started talking about a possible reduction in supplies from Russia in the future after it became known that the main supplier of Russian slabs to Europe, Evraz, was included in the 19th package of EU trade sanctions against Russia in connection with its attempted invasion of Ukraine.
Northern Europe
In Northern Europe, domestic steel sheet prices rose in the week to Thursday, "helped by stable slab prices and limited import competition," the sources said.
And the factories of the region,
