The European plate market is continuing to struggle amid low slab costs, knock-on effects from a pressured coils market and slow end-of-year dynamics, leaving the market with "messy" prices, sources told S&P Global Platts.
Northern European mills were heard offering around Eur600-605/mt ex-works Ruhr for S235 grade, but sources said that trades would be lower than that.
Buy-side sources said prices would be in a wide range of Eur570-590/mt ex-works Ruhr with material from German mills at the higher end of the price range.
Similarly to coils mills, plate producers have not yet started to communicate the usual price increases for the beginning of next year. A German mill source told Platts it would be looking to fill Q1 order books soon.
Sources said that high stocks in Germany, typical for the end of the year, would leave buyers little incentive to purchase material at the moment.
The Italian market has been hit by lower slab costs, leaving the plate market "messy," according to an Italian source who put the range for S275 grade at Eur540-570/mt ex-works Italy. Sources also said that slab costs were heard around $440/mt FOB Black Sea and that Italian material would be available in Germany.
The import market remained quiet once again the week ending Friday, November 23.
"There are no imports for plate. I'm glad there's nothing because the market is already bad," said a German stockholder.
A Benelux trader said that Russian material has disappeared from the market.
"They have not been able to do any 'follow-up' deals, so to speak, because of either performance or quality issues," the source said.
Korea has been largely absent from the market for months due to a fairly strong domestic market, leaving Koreans with "no incentive to sell plate cheaply into Europe," the source said.
Eurofer data shows that the biggest import source has remained Ukraine over January to September, followed by South Korea and India.
According to the European Commission's website, 765,656 mt of plate can still be imported into the European Union as of the last allocation date November 22. The initial amount was at 1.44 million mt in July.
