There has been a low level of plate imports all through the year so far in the European Union. This has been even more complicated by the latest safeguard measures, so an inversion of trade flows with Europe as a net exporter might not be out of the question.

“Prices don’t differ all that much globally,” an experienced plate trader tells Kallanish. “With China nearly on Europe’s level, and India and South Korea similar, Europe is not interesting for them,” he says. This, however, could mean import potential for European mills into markets from which the South East Asians have withdrawn. “Someone in the Middle East could now go for European material rather than for Chinese,” he suggests, claiming that he has already heard of some such activity.

Apart from the lack of good offers from overseas to the EU and the newly-imposed trade measures, September is a particularly unfavourable period for imports, he says. This is because “… if you order now in early September, you’d receive it right for Christmas – and that’s when stockholders prefer to have their inventories empty,” the trader adds.

In such circumstances, it is little comfort that the European Commission has defined relatively duty-free quotas for all steel products. In the case of plate, of the original quota of 1.443 million tonnes in mid-July, only some 134,000t had been allocated to orders by the end of August.

The price level from north-western EU mills is seen at €620-640/tonne ($718-741/t) ex-works. That of the Italian re-rollers is about to reach €600/t, but could be lower for northbound orders, provided transport costs are “… reasonable,” sources suggest.