Stainless Steel Coil & Sheet (304 / 304L / 316L / 430 / 201, 2B / BA / No.1)

Cold-rolled and hot-rolled stainless flat by grade, finish and gauge

Stainless flat steel is bought on grade, finish, thickness and width, and each one moves the price. Grade sets the alloy: 304 (18% chromium, 8% nickel, UNS S30400, EN 1.4301) is the general-purpose austenitic grade, 304L its low-carbon version for welded work, 316L (EN 1.4404) adds about 2% molybdenum for chloride and marine service, 430 (EN 1.4016) is a nickel-free ferritic grade for appliance and trim use, and 201 replaces most of the nickel with manganese for lower-cost indoor applications, with lower corrosion resistance than 304. Because nickel and molybdenum are the costly elements, stainless is commonly priced with an alloy surcharge or against nickel, and the grade choice is the first price decision. Finish follows from the rolling route: hot-rolled, annealed and pickled coil is No.1, generally 3 mm and thicker, for tanks, chemical equipment and re-rolling; cold-rolled 2B is the smooth, matt, skin-passed standard finish; BA (bright annealed) is mirror-like for appliances and decorative use; and No.4 and hairline are brushed finishes applied afterwards, often with PVC film. Products are specified to ASTM A240 / A480, EN 10088-2 or JIS G4304 (hot-rolled) and G4305 (cold-rolled), with thickness, width, flatness and edge (mill or slit) tolerances to the named standard, and the EN 10204 3.1 certificate reports heat number, chemistry including nickel, chromium and molybdenum, mechanical properties and, where specified, intergranular corrosion testing. Third-party inspection by SGS, Bureau Veritas or TÜV typically adds positive material identification (PMI) of grade on arrival or at load, because a 201 coil marked as 304 is the fraud this market worries about. UN Comtrade 2024 export declarations put flat-rolled stainless of 600 mm width and over (HS 7219) at USD 31.22 bn, led by Indonesia at 18.5%, China at 16.2%, Belgium at 10.3%, Finland at 8.5%, Italy at 7.2%, Korea at 5.9% and Taiwan at 5.7%.

The buyers are tube and pipe mills, kitchen-equipment, appliance and elevator-panel makers, food, dairy and chemical-equipment fabricators, architectural cladding contractors, and the stainless service centres that slit and cut coil for all of them. CBIL is a commodity brokerage company and brokers stainless coil and sheet from Indonesian, Chinese, Indian, Taiwanese, Korean, Belgian, Finnish, Italian and Spanish mills and their distributors to those buyers, against a certificate stating the country where the steel was melted and poured. Trade measures are heavy in stainless. From 1 July 2026 Regulation (EU) 2026/1384 replaced the EU steel safeguard with country-allocated annual tariff quotas and a 50% out-of-quota duty, and since 1 January 2026 the EU CBAM definitive period requires importers above 50 tonnes a year to be authorised CBAM declarants surrendering certificates for embedded emissions. The EU extended its anti-dumping duty on stainless cold-rolled flat products from China and Taiwan after an expiry review in July 2025, Japan imposed provisional anti-dumping duties in July 2026 on nickel-added cold-rolled stainless coil, sheet and strip from China and Taiwan, and in the United States the Section 232 proclamation effective 8 June 2026 applies 50% to articles entirely or almost entirely of steel, on full customs value, with partner-specific treatment for some origins; other markets apply their own measures by origin, so the buyer checks the rate for the mill at the discharge port before contracting. Coils and sheet packs are packed export-seaworthy on wooden skids or pallets with waterproof paper, steel wrap and edge protection, and shipped in 20-foot containers for most stockist and fabricator lots, or breakbulk on multipurpose tonnage for larger hot-rolled parcels, where CBIL's chartering desk (LaycanDesk) quotes the freight. Terms are FOB, CFR, CIF and DAP, and pricing is per metric tonne on grade, finish and size, referenced to published stainless flat price assessments and, for alloy content, the LME nickel price. Send your grade, finish, thickness and width, coil or sheet (with sheet length), standard, film or edge requirements, PMI and inspection needs, monthly tonnage and discharge port.

Need the ship as well? Our chartering desk prices steel coil and plates breakbulk freight on LaycanDesk.

Excluded origins are not offered, including product re-exported, blended or re-processed through a third country. Every lot moves with a certificate of origin naming the producing plant, mine or grower country, and nothing is quoted before the seller and loading point are known.