Hot-rolled coil and plate prices by country (HS 7208)

Hot-rolled coil is the reference product of the steel trade. Almost every other heading on this site starts life as a coil off a hot strip mill, which is why its customs unit value is the number buyers quote back at each other when they argue about whether a price is fair.

• 785 USD/tmedian import unit value, 2024
• 22reporting markets
• HS 7208customs heading

Import unit values by country

Export unit values by country

Reading the hot-rolled coil and plate numbers

• Across the reporting markets the lowest landed number is Kenya at 639 USD per tonne and the highest is Iraq at 1,455. The 128 % gap is not one market being clever: it is thickness, width, grade and how far the coil had to travel.
• Reporting markets took 39,678,588 tonnes of hot-rolled coil and plate in 2024, 30,026 million dollars of trade, with Germany absorbing 17 % of the tonnage on its own.
• The sharpest re-roller in the set is Kenya, receiving 395 USD per tonne more on export than it pays on import — coil in, coated or cut product out.

What sits inside HS 7208

Everything from 1.5 mm commercial coil to 100 mm quenched and tempered plate sits in this single heading, which is why its unit value moves with product mix as much as with the market.

• Compare like with like before you use any of these numbers: 2 mm commercial coil and 40 mm quenched plate are the same customs heading and several hundred dollars apart.
• Pickled and oiled material carries a premium of roughly 30 to 60 USD per tonne over black coil in most lanes, and it is invisible in customs data.
• Mill order books, not spot demand, set the lead time. A rolled-to-order width is three to five weeks; ex-stock from a service centre is days.
• Width matters to price more than buyers expect. Anything under 1,000 mm or over 1,800 mm usually costs an extra rolling charge.

Why a customs heading is wider than a product specification →

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