EU HRC imports top 500,000t at start of 2025

At least 530,000t of hot-rolled coils (HRC) have been put forward for customs clearance in the EU as of yesterday, according to newly-reset safeguard quotas data tracked by Argus.

This includes 181,874t of Japanese and 150,920t of Vietnamese material. Each country has a duty-free allowance of 138,766t per quarter, which indicates a pro-rata safeguard duty will be payable. It is not yet clear if these are the final volumes, as the new year holidays could be skewing the availability of some customs data, while buyers in some countries such as Italy have the possibility to cancel their custom clearance, which they have done regularly in the past.

However some may be less inclined to do so this quarter, given the ongoing anti-dumping investigation in the bloc on Japan, Vietnam, India and Egypt, which market participants expect will result in retroactive tariffs.

The awaiting allocation volume for Egypt stands at 76,143t, and no HRC is pending clearance from India. Meanwhile, 111,848t of Taiwanese material have been put forward for import.

January imports will most likely be higher than November and December, as has become the norm in the first month of a new quarter, but they are on track to be lower than in October, when comparing customs clearance volumes then. As of 1 October, 875,339t were awaiting allocation.

EU import data, published by Argus, further shows that over 200,000t from Vietnam, Japan and Taiwan were ultimately pulled back from customs clearance in October. Despite this, ramped up Turkish and Ukrainian imports later on in the month, and some additional volumes from South Korea, Serbia, Australia and Indonesia, brought the overall October arrivals to 1.2mn t.

By Lora Stoyanova