Tokyo Steel to Start Sales of Steel Plate for Shipbuilding

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing announced on Monday the firm starts the sales of steel plate for shipbuilding from August contracts when the firm acquired standards of steel products for shipbuilding for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping (LR), American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) and Nippon Kaiji Kyokai (NK). The firm also plans to acquire the standard for South Korean shipbuilding in August. Tokyo Steel’s steel plate is priced at 78,000 yen per tonne for general users while an extra of 2,000 yen per tonne will be added for NK and KA grade for shipbuilding.Tokyo Steel Manufacturing started plate production at Kyushu plant in January 2007 and now produces approximately 20,000 tonnes per month under the capacity at 50,000 tonnes per month. Products are sized at 9-32 millimeters thick, 2,100 millimeters or 2,438 millimeters width and 6,096 millimeters length. The firm will expand the products to maximum 60 millimeters thick, 2,500 millimeters width and 12,192 millimeters length. The firm now produces steel plate of general structural grade SS400, welding grade SM490A, building grade SN490B and shipbuilding grade NK and KA.Steel plate supply maintains tight due to strong demand for shipbuilding, construction and industrial machines worldwide. Tokyo Steel Manufacturing sells steel plate at about 20,000 tonnes per month for domestic and overseas markets, the half of which is exported mainly for Middle East and Southeast Asia. Japanese steel plate export price is recently around FOB US$ 680 per tonne, which is higher by around FOB US$ 70-80 for shipbuilding. Tokyo Steel aims to increase the sales of high value-added products such for shipbuilding.