Hot rolled coil (HRC) prices have increased further in the EU market in the past few days due to tight supply and good demand. Compared to early this week, transaction prices have increased by €10/mt to €720-750/mt ex-works on average. As usual, the lower end of the range refers to the prices recorded in southern Europe, while the upper end is for northern Europe.
As previously reported by SteelOrbis, late last week ArcelorMittal raised its offers for cold rolled coils (CRC) and hot dip galvanized (HDG) coils, but kept its HRC offers unchanged at €750/mt ex-works. However, some other European producers started asking for prices up to €780/mt, according to sources.
As for the import market, HRC offers from various sources stand at €700-720/mt CFR southern Europe, with shipments in June. "This means this material will arrive in late June or in July depending on the source," one trader underlined. EU safeguard measures on steel imports will expire on June 30 this year, and last week the European Commission announced that it has started a review of them in order to determine whether to extend their duration or not. Recently, a coalition of European downstream users of steel asked the Commission not to extend safeguard measures beyond their expiry date as since the second half of 2020 they have been facing surging prices for steel products and long delivery times amid insufficient domestic supply.