Higher Ferrous Scrap Use by Japan Converter Steel Making

Japanese scrap consumption by converter operations kept high at 12.4% in ferrous scrap rate for steel source in May, according to Japan Ferrous Raw Materials Association. The converter operations’ scrap usage rate has kept more than 12% since October 2006 when they try to use higher volume scrap stably. The converter steel making operations used 1.01 million tonnes of ferrous scrap in May, which was 2% higher than April and reached 1 million tonnes for the first time in 2 months. The volume increased by 8% from a year earlier. The ferrous scrap consumption by converter increased by 11% to 4.98 million tonnes, which represented almost 1 million tonnes per month, in January-May from same period of 2006. The ferrous scrap rate for the steel source was 12.4%, which was 0.7 percentage points higher than same period of 2006.