Post by Phuong Anh Nguyen

Europe's steel export corridor is quietly closing, and it changes where buyers should be looking. Two things from this week's Metal Expert report, read together, tell a bigger story. Turkey: rebar prices keep sliding, both at home and for export, as the EU's revised safeguard quotas (effective July 1) squeeze Turkish mills' export options. Even the most competitive producer, Kardemir, only moved 42,000t by cutting price again to $566/t. Demand simply isn't recovering. Mills are fighting harder for a shrinking slice. Ukraine: rebar exports fell to 28,000t in June, down 11% month on month. H1 2026 volume is down 48% year on year. The cause isn't weaker buyer interest. It's that the EU just cut Ukraine's quota to a fraction of what it shipped in 2025. This is a structural cut, not a slow month. Put together, two of Europe's traditional long product export corridors are being compressed by the same policy tool, at the same time. For buyers used to sourcing from either origin, that's worth acting on. Testing alternative, AD-clean origins now beats scrambling for the same ones later. Curious how others sourcing into or out of the EU are seeing this. Are buyers already asking about non-EU-corridor origins, or still waiting it out? 🤔 #Steel #Turkey #Ukraine #EUsafeguard #SteelTrading