All CBAM CN codes
CN 7606Covered by CBAMAluminium

CN 7606 under CBAM — Aluminium Sheets & Plates

Aluminium plates, sheets and strip, thickness > 0.2 mm

Rolled aluminium — plates, sheets, coils and strip above 0.2 mm — for transport, packaging, construction and general engineering. India’s rolling majors (Hindalco’s complexes among them) and independent re-rollers export to EU converters and fabricators. Thinner product becomes foil under CN 7607.

Covered
CBAM status of this heading
1 Jan 2026
Definitive phase — certificates due
€70–80
per tCO₂ — certificate price tracks EU ETS
up to ~40%
typical cost cut with verified actuals
Emission profile

Where the emissions in CN 7606 come from

Rolling adds real but secondary energy (hot mills, annealing); the slab or coil feedstock carries the smelting emissions — coal-power primary at 14–18 tCO₂/t, hydro at 4–7, scrap-based at 0.5–1.5. The EU default value for this heading is deliberately conservative; integrated producers with hydro assets and re-rollers running high recycled content both stand to gain visibly from verified actuals.

Why we don’t print a default value here

The EU publishes and updates specific default values per goods category separately — quoting a stale number would mislead you. What never changes: defaults are set deliberately high, and the markup escalates from 10% in 2026 to 30% by 2028 for steel and aluminium (free-allowance phase-out runs to 2034). Use the CBAM calculator for a current, product-specific estimate.

What to do

Exporting under CN 7606? Three moves, in order.

  1. 01

    Identify your production route and precursors

    Establish the metal source — own smelter (document its power), purchased slab/coil (a precursor needing supplier data), or remelt with scrap share — then bound your rolling and finishing stages.

  2. 02

    Collect the data you already have

    Hot- and cold-mill energy records, annealing furnace fuel logs, metal sourcing documentation, remelt charge registers, production weights by gauge.

  3. 03

    File verified actuals, not defaults

    Have the numbers computed to the EU CBAM methodology and verified, then hand your EU buyer’s Authorised Declarant a filing they can use. Verified actuals typically cut the CBAM cost by up to ~40% versus default values — and the default markup only gets worse, escalating from 10% in 2026 to 30% by 2028 for steel and aluminium.

Free this quarter: We cover your first report (April–June 2026) so an inflated EU default never costs you an order. Continue only if you choose to. Free for the April–June 2026 quarter — start your report by 30 September 2026.

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Frequently asked

CN 7606 and CBAM, in plain English

Is CN 7606 covered by CBAM?

Yes. CN 7606 — aluminium plates, sheets and strip over 0.2 mm thick — is a covered good under the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. Any consignment under this heading imported into the EU has carried reporting obligations since the transitional phase (1 October 2023 – 31 December 2025), and since the definitive phase began on 1 January 2026 the EU importer must buy CBAM certificates against its embedded emissions. Coil and sheet for EU transport, construction and packaging converters import under this heading.

How much CBAM cost does CN 7606 face in 2026?

CBAM certificates track the EU ETS carbon price — roughly €70–80 per tonne of CO₂ in 2026 — so the bill is your embedded emissions multiplied by that price. Aluminium’s bill is dominated by electricity: coal-powered primary metal carries several times the embedded emissions of hydro-powered or scrap-based metal, so two identical consignments can face wildly different CBAM costs. Verified actuals typically cut the cost by up to ~40% versus defaults — use our calculator for a product-specific estimate.

Our sheet uses 60–70% recycled content. How much does that help under CBAM?

Substantially — in reality. Scrap-based metal carries 0.5–1.5 tCO₂/t against 14–18 for coal-power primary, so a high-recycled-content sheet has a genuinely low embedded-emissions figure. But CBAM only credits what verification proves: the scrap share must be documented through charge records and the calculation done to the EU methodology. On defaults, the recycled content earns you nothing at all.

Are coated or painted aluminium coils treated differently?

Coating adds an in-boundary processing stage (oven fuel, line power) but does not change the heading’s coverage or the dominance of the metal precursor in the number. As with steel, the completeness of the boundary is what a verifier checks — a correct filing includes the coating line, and ours do.