Just a week after the latest EU quotas were issued on October 1, the three countries have already exhausted their quotas for some steel varieties and 50 percent of some steel varieties, which are scheduled to last three months until December 31. Turkey had already exhausted its rebar import quota (90,856 tonnes) on October 1, the first day of the new quota, and other categories such as gas pipes, hollow steel and stainless steel cold coils had also consumed most of their quota (around 60-90%).

  On October 6, the EU formally imposed its eighth round of sanctions on Russia, which restrict exports of Russian-made semi-finished materials, including slabs and billets, and ban the use of previously imported Russian semi-finished materials. With more than 80% of the EU’s semi-finished steel products coming from Russia and Ukraine, adding up to the tight quota of the above mainstream steel varieties, the European steel price may rise in the future, because the market may not be able to meet the deadline (the EU’s slab transition period to October 1, 2024). Billet transition to April 2024) to fill the gap in Russian steel volume.

  According to Mysteel, NLMK is the only Russian steel group that still sends slabs to the EU under EU sanctions, and sends most of its slabs to its subsidiaries in Belgium, France and elsewhere in Europe. Severstal, a large Russian steel group, had previously announced that it would stop shipping steel products to the EU, so the sanctions had no effect on the company. EVRAZ, a big Russian billet exporter, does not currently sell any steel products to the EU.