FlowMarket
Where to source steel and metal: FlowMarket is a B2B sourcing network powered by an AI agent. You describe the material — grade and standard, product form and dimensions with tolerances, delivery condition, surface, required certification, processing such as cutting and quantity — and the AI agent matches you with verified steel stockholders, service centres and mills, then requests prices and lead times from every match at once. Getting matched is free for buyers.
Sourcing steel and metal
Steel looks like the most fungible thing you can buy and behaves like the opposite. A grade, a standard and a delivery condition are three separate pieces of information, and a request that carries only one of them cannot be priced accurately by anyone.
It is also a market where the price moves under you. Alloy surcharges, scrap indices and energy costs mean quotations carry short validity, so speed of comparison matters as much as the number itself.
What you can source
Flat products
Hot-rolled and cold-rolled coil, sheet and plate, in structural grades such as S235JR and S355J2, pressure vessel grades, and stainless in 1.4301 and 1.4404. Specified by thickness, width and length with a tolerance class, plus surface condition — mill scale, pickled and oiled, galvanised, or a rolled stainless finish. Most service centres will slit, cut to length or profile-cut to your drawing.
Long products and sections
Beams, channels and angles to EN 10025, hollow sections in square, rectangular and circular form, round and flat bar, and reinforcing steel. Sold by length or weight, usually in standard mill lengths with cutting available. For structural use in the EU, the fabricator's EN 1090 obligations reach back into the material and its documentation, so certification is not optional.
Stainless, tool steel and non-ferrous
- Stainless & duplex — 1.4301, 1.4404, 1.4462; chosen by corrosion exposure rather than by looks.
- Tool & engineering steels — 1.2379, 42CrMo4, 16MnCr5, supplied annealed or quenched and tempered.
- Copper, brass & bronze — sheet, bar and tube for electrical, plumbing and bearing applications.
- Titanium & nickel alloys — for corrosive, high-temperature or weight-critical duty.
What to specify when sourcing
These details decide both the price and whether the quote is comparable:
- Grade & standard — the full designation with the standard it is written to, not just "mild steel".
- Delivery condition — as-rolled, normalised, quenched and tempered, annealed; part of the grade, not an extra.
- Form & dimensions — thickness, width, length or diameter, with the tolerance class that applies.
- Surface — mill finish, pickled and oiled, galvanised, shot blasted, or a specified stainless finish.
- Certification — EN 10204 2.2, 3.1 or 3.2; ordered with the material, not afterwards.
- Processing — cutting, slitting, laser or plasma profiling, bevelling, drilling, deburring.
- Quantity & call-off — tonnage or pieces, one-off or scheduled, and whether stock can be held.
- Traceability — heat number marking and whether pieces must stay identifiable after cutting.
- Origin & compliance — EU or import origin, mill approval, and any customer-specific restrictions.
- Commercial terms — Incoterms, delivery location, packaging and how long the price is held.
Grade, condition and the certificate you cannot add later
The most common reason two steel quotes are not comparable is that they are not for the same material. "S355" names a strength class; "S355J2+N" names the impact toughness at minus twenty degrees and the normalised delivery condition, and those additions change both the price and where the material can legally be used. The same applies across the board — 1.4301 and 1.4404 look identical and behave very differently in chloride exposure, and a heat-treatable grade supplied annealed is not the same product as one supplied quenched and tempered. Give the full designation and the condition, and the offers line up. The second thing to settle before ordering rather than after is the inspection certificate. An EN 10204 3.1 certificate is issued by the mill's independent inspection department and carries the heat number tying that specific melt to your material. It has to be requested with the order, because once material is cut from unmarked stock the link back to the heat is gone — and obtaining a certificate retrospectively ranges from expensive to impossible. If your parts fall under EN 1090 structural fabrication or any pressure application, assume 3.1 is required and say so in the enquiry. Finally, ask how long each price holds. Alloy surcharges on stainless and energy-linked pricing on carbon steel move monthly, and a quote without a validity date is not really a quote.