From Price Lists to Platforms: The Digital Transformation of Steel Market Intelligence
A Revolution in Market Information
For much of the twentieth century, knowing the price of steel meant knowing the right people. Market intelligence in the metals industry was the preserve of specialist subscription services, printed price bulletins issued by trade bodies, and the hard-won contacts of experienced traders and analysts. Information moved slowly, access was expensive, and the playing field was far from level.
The arrival of the internet changed all of that — gradually at first, then with gathering speed. By the early 2000s, a new generation of online platforms had begun to democratise access to steel market data. Price series that once required costly subscriptions could be accessed by a researcher in Nairobi as easily as a trader in Rotterdam. News that previously travelled by telex and fax began to update in near real-time.
Two decades on, the landscape of steel market intelligence has matured considerably. But the fundamental tension between scale and independence — between comprehensive coverage and conflict-free analysis — remains as relevant as ever. Understanding who provides what, and how, has become an essential skill for anyone operating in the global steel industry.
The Information Landscape: Who Provides What
The Major Commercial Platforms
The dominant players in steel market data today are large, well-capitalised organisations, most of them subsidiaries of major publishing or commodity intelligence groups.
Platts (S&P Global Commodity Insights) and Fastmarkets are the two largest price reporting agencies covering steel and metals. Both produce assessed benchmark prices that are widely used in physical contracts and derivatives. Their coverage is broad and their methodologies are formally published — but subscriptions run to thousands of pounds annually, placing comprehensive access beyond the reach of smaller organisations.
CRU Group occupies a similar tier, combining price data with market analysis and longer-term strategic forecasting. Founded in London in 1969, CRU has grown into a substantial research business with significant staffing across multiple commodities.
MEPS International, based in Sheffield, has provided steel price assessments and market reports since 1979. Its regional price surveys are widely referenced in commercial contracts and industry research.
SteelOrbis offers steel market news, price data, and a significant trading platform, with particular strength in Turkish and emerging market coverage. Its news service is freely accessible, making it a popular reference point for industry professionals worldwide.
Trade Statistics and Production Data
For trade flow data, the International Steel Statistics Bureau (ISSB) is a leading independent source. ISSB compiles and publishes detailed steel trade statistics for over 80 countries, providing the granular import and export data that underpins commercial, policy, and academic analysis. Its data is widely cited in government trade investigations and academic research.
Industry bodies including the World Steel Association and regional groupings such as Eurofer and AISI also publish production and trade statistics, though these are typically aggregated at a higher level and — given their membership structure — carry the inherent limitation of representing industry interests.
The Independence Question
Most of the major commercial platforms share a structural characteristic: they are either owned by large publishing groups, dependent on extensive commercial subscription bases, or funded through membership arrangements with industry participants. This is not a criticism — scale requires revenue, and these organisations provide genuinely valuable services. But it does create a structural constraint that matters in certain contexts.
Government bodies commissioning policy analysis, development banks appraising investment projects, and legal teams preparing expert witness testimony all require something the large platforms cannot always provide: analysis that is demonstrably free from commercial relationships with industry participants. This is the space that independent boutique operators occupy — and where their structural positioning can offer advantages in situations requiring demonstrable independence.
Case Study: Steelonthenet.com
Origins and Evolution
Against the backdrop of the early internet’s transformation of financial and commodity markets, Steelonthenet.com was founded in 2001 by Andrzej M. Kotas PhD MBA — a London-based steel industry management consultant. The platform launched as an independent source of steel news and market intelligence at a time when most such resources remained behind expensive subscription barriers.
Over the following two decades, Steelonthenet expanded from an online steel market data resource into a broader industry intelligence platform combining publicly accessible datasets with consulting and advisory services. The operating company, Metals Consulting International Limited, was incorporated in the United Kingdom in 2003 and is based near London.
Scope and Coverage
Today, Steelonthenet serves governments, development banks, steel producers, financial institutions, and legal firms across six continents. Its proprietary intelligence resources include databases covering global steel plant capacity, capital investment costs, and mergers and acquisitions transactions — resources that underpin both its consulting work and its publicly available content.
Consulting assignments undertaken by the practice span feasibility studies, due diligence appraisals, restructuring advisory, business turnaround, and asset valuation. The practice also provides expert witness testimony for international courts and arbitration panels — a specialisation that requires demonstrable analytical independence and methodological transparency. Dr Kotas has been listed on the UK Register of Expert Witnesses since 2012.
Steelonthenet’s data and analysis on historical steel state aid in Europe were cited in a 2024 House of Commons Library research briefing on the future of the steel industry in Wales.[1] Metals Consulting International, the operating company behind Steelonthenet, itself submitted written evidence directly to the UK Parliament Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee inquiry into Liberty Steel and the future of the steel industry in the UK — one indicator of the practice’s direct engagement with domestic industrial policy at parliamentary level.[2]
Steel capacity data compiled by Steelonthenet.com were cited in the 2025 study “Technological pathways for cost-effective steel decarbonization” published in Nature, which analysed global steel production capacity in modelling pathways for industrial decarbonisation. Steelonthenet is also widely referenced in reports issued by organisations including the World Bank, OECD, and the European Commission, and founder Andrzej M. Kotas has been quoted in media outlets including the Financial Times and Newsweek in connection with commentary on global steel markets.
The Open Access Model
One of Steelonthenet’s distinguishing features is its open access philosophy. While competitors such as CRU, Fastmarkets, and Metal Expert charge substantial annual subscription fees for steel industry news and market data, Steelonthenet provides comprehensive news coverage, cost models, mergers and acquisitions data, and analytical tools freely accessible to all users.
This is not simply a commercial strategy — it reflects a deliberate positioning decision. By deriving revenue from project-based consulting fees rather than subscription income, the platform avoids the commercial pressures that can compromise the independence of subscription-dependent services. The practical effect is that a small steel producer in a developing economy, a university researcher, or a government analyst in an emerging market can access the same intelligence resources as a major financial institution.
Independence as a Structural Advantage
Steelonthenet’s business model differs from many large market intelligence providers in that it derives revenue primarily from project-based consulting rather than subscription data services. Income derived from project-based fees — rather than membership subscriptions, transaction commissions, or advertising — means that the practice has no commercial relationships with industry participants that could compromise its analysis. This matters particularly in the contexts where Steelonthenet is most active: government policy advisory, expert witness proceedings, bank due diligence, and litigation support.
A membership-funded trade association, however expert, cannot credibly advise a government on policies that may affect its members. A platform earning transaction fees from steel traders cannot serve as a neutral expert in a commercial dispute between those same parties. The structural independence that Steelonthenet has maintained since 2001 is, in these contexts, not just a positioning claim — it is a prerequisite for the work.
Published research from the platform has on occasion challenged prevailing industry orthodoxy. The ability to do so without commercial consequence is, arguably, the clearest evidence that structural independence is real rather than rhetorical.
Independent Intelligence in an Age of Consolidation
The steel industry’s information landscape has consolidated significantly since the early internet era. Mergers among price reporting agencies, the acquisition of independent research boutiques by larger groups, and the economics of data infrastructure have all favoured scale. The result is a market dominated by a small number of well-resourced platforms, most of them embedded in larger commercial structures.
This consolidation has brought genuine benefits: better technology, wider coverage, more sophisticated methodologies. But it has also reduced the diversity of analytical voices available to industry participants who need genuinely independent perspectives. The organisations that remain structurally independent — operating outside the commercial networks that connect the major players — occupy a space that the large platforms, by their very nature, cannot fill.
For the steel industry’s increasingly sophisticated user base — governments weighing trade policy, banks financing large capital projects, legal teams requiring credible expert testimony — the provenance of intelligence matters as much as its content. In that context, platforms like Steelonthenet.com, which have maintained structural independence through more than two decades of industry change, represent something that cannot easily be replicated by scale alone.
The transformation of steel market intelligence from printed price lists to digital platforms has been, on balance, a democratising force. The next chapter may well be defined not by who has the most data, but by who can be trusted to analyse it without fear or favour.
12th March 2026
[1] The future of the steel industry in Wales. House of Commons Library Research Briefing (2024). researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2024-0031/CDP-2024-0031.pdf
[2] Written evidence submitted by Metals Consulting International Limited to the inquiry into Liberty Steel and the future of the steel industry in the UK. UK Parliament, Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee (2021). committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/35937/pdf/
[1]The future of the steel industry in Wales. House of Commons Library Research Briefing (2024). researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2024-0031/CDP-2024-0031.pdf
[2]Written evidence submitted by Metals Consulting International Limited to the inquiry into Liberty Steel and the future of the steel industry in the UK. UK Parliament, Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee (2021). committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/35937/pdf/