Europe: Indian mills exhaust their HRC, CRC export quota volumes for Q1CY'22

• Indian steelmakers exhaust Q1 quotas for HRC, plates, CRC
  
  
• Mills fall short in meeting longs export quota
  
  

Indian steel behemoths, who remain active in booking flat-rolled products for exports to the European market, have exhausted the allocated quotas for (Jan-Mar) Q1CY'22. However, when it comes to longs products, they fell short in meeting the quota limits.

Indian steel quotas: For Q1CY'22, the quota allocation for HRCs stood around 166,027 tonnes (t), CRC around 147,656 t and quarto plates at 49,127 t. These were duly exported in the designated quarter. Steel majors turned active in export bookings to EU markets by mid-Jan'22, after which the frequency increased in mid-Feb and continued till mid-Mar'22.

Lately, the European Commission has put forth its intent on restricting trade ties with Russia and restraining on other benefits amidst its invasion on Ukraine. The EC banned the imports of key goods in the iron and steel sector from the Russian Federation, thus, benefitting Indian players as they could come in to fill in the gap.

Prices rally: Indian mills started fetching higher net sales realisation from the European market since early-Feb'22, booking HRCs for exports at $900-910/t CFR levels to $1,360-1,370 CFR Antwerp towards end-Mar'22.

EU revises Q2 steel import quotas: The recent invasion of Russia on Ukraine led to some strict sanctions on the former by the European Commission. Moreover, the quarterly quotas of Russia and Belarus were re-distributed among other countries. This has pushed up the export quotas of HRC for Indian exporters to 273,178 t (+39%), while those of CRC to 86,589 t (+1%) for Q2CY'22 (Apr-June).

Similar was the scene with long products with Indian exporters meeting the allocated volumes for Q1.

Quotas from other countries remain unmet: In contrast with India, other countries have been unable to meet their quota volumes for the quarter, which will be converted into residual quotas for the succeeding quarter. South Korea, Serbia and Russia covered up for the slow exports in the latter half of the quarter for flat products while others could not catch up. Similarly, for the long products, most of the countries could not meet their quotas amidst the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine geo-political conflict and the subsequent hindrances in logistics.