Japan Steel Sheet Import Increases in May

Japanese steel sheet import increased by 12.7% to 220,364 tonnes in May from April for hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized products when the import of cold-rolled steel sheet increased by 71% while hot-rolled and galvanized sheet decreased. In January-May, the import of hot-rolled sheet decreased by 13.1% from the same period of 2005, cold-rolled sheet decreased by 39.4% and galvanized sheet increased by 3%. Importer source pointed out that cold-rolled sheet owed the sharp increase in May to the massive arrival of delayed imports from South Korea.The import decreased by 1.8% to 115,457 tonnes for hot-rolled steel sheet in May from April, increased by 71.0% to 81,873 tonnes for cold-rolled steel sheet and decreased by 23.4% to 23,034 tonnes for galvanized steel sheet. The import increased by 18.1% to 139,472 tonnes from South Korea and by 27.4% to 76,250 tonnes from Taiwan, while be quartered to 3,724 tonnes from China.