Steel products sourcing and trading

Steel products sit at the finished end of ROXAY Trading’s metals chain — the point where raw material has become something with dimensions, a grade and a standard attached to it.

Specification is contractual, not descriptive

A steel enquiry lives or dies on four variables: product type, grade, dimensions with tolerance, and the applicable standard.

The last of these is the one most often left implicit and most often causes a problem. Standards differ by market, and material certified to one is not automatically acceptable under another. A buyer whose downstream customer or building code requires a specific standard needs that written into the contract, because it changes which suppliers can serve the order.

Tolerance matters for the same reason. Steel that is within grade but outside dimensional tolerance may be unusable for a fabricator working to fixed drawings.

What buyers are managing

Distributors are holding stock against demand they can forecast only approximately; their concern is that what arrives matches what they sold. Fabricators are working to drawings with no room for variance. Construction buyers are working to a programme where a delayed delivery moves every trade that follows it.

Across all three, the commercial risk is less about price than about the gap between what was specified and what arrives.

What a buyer needs to define

Product type, grade, dimensions and tolerance, applicable standard, volume, discharge port, preferred Incoterm and the delivery window. Mill test certification requirements should be stated at enquiry stage rather than raised after production.

How ROXAY handles a steel products trade

We qualify supply against the full specification including the standard, structure the commercial terms, agree certification and inspection points, and coordinate delivery against the agreed Incoterm and schedule.

Mills, origin countries, suppliers and routes are not published.