[SMM Stainless Steel Flash] EU Q4 steel quotas fill within days as India overshoots stainless bar and tube caps

PT Metal Smeltindo Selaras (MSS), a China-invested nickel smelter in Morowali, Central Sulawesi, is facing a PKPU petition filed by nickel mining and trading company PT Mineral Maju Sejahtera. The case was registered at the Central Jakarta Commercial Court on September 29, 2026, with the first hearing scheduled for October 8. MSS operates an RKEF smelter with eight furnaces and targeted feronickel capacity of around 600,000 mt/y. No production suspension has been confirmed.

The European Commission's Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union (DG TAXUD) published its CBAM de minimis assessment on 30 September. For 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, it found that the 50-tonne single mass-based threshold exempted less than the statutory 1% limit of embedded emissions, so the threshold stays in place. Under the CBAM Regulation, the Commission must amend the threshold by delegated act if the value calculated under Annex VII deviates from the current one by more than 15 tonnes. The assessment did not publish the underlying calculation or methodology, and came later than the 30 April deadline set in the Regulation. DG TAXUD also issued a factsheet on CBAM certificates, but the delegated act on certificate sales, repurchase and fees has yet to be adopted and, according to industry sources, has slipped from the second quarter to the fourth. With certificate sales due to start on 1 February 2027 and Parliament and Council able to take up to four months to object, the rules risk not being in place in time. The Article 9 implementing regulation on crediting carbon prices paid in the country of origin has also been stuck at draft stage since May. For stainless steel importers, imports below 50 tonnes a year remain exempt, while those above the threshold still face uncertainty over certificate purchasing and origin-country carbon price credits, keeping CBAM cost calculations unsettled.

Stainless steel wire rod export prices from Taiwan (PoC) have kept rising and now stand at their highest level in more than a year, after a sizeable cumulative gain over the past seven months. Higher costs for nickel and other raw materials have led mills to raise domestic list prices repeatedly, lifting export prices at local wire rod producers Walsin Lihwa and Yieh Hsing. Volumes have not kept pace, however: wire rod exports from Taiwan (PoC) in January–August remained below the same period last year. Market participants say any profit improvement at the two companies will depend on export volumes growing alongside higher prices. This also helps explain why Walsin Lihwa held its October 304 wire rod base price flat and adjusted only copper- and molybdenum-bearing grades: with export volumes soft, a broad price increase could further erode downstream export competitiveness. Points to watch are nickel prices and whether overseas wire rod demand recovers.