Japanese carbon steel order receipt decreased by 4.7% to 5.496 million tonnes in July from a year earlier, announced by Japan Iron and Steel Federation on Monday. The order decreased for 5 months in a row due to slow demand for domestic market and export. However, the domestic order increased by 23.4% to 760,000 tonnes for automobile in July from June, which recovered 90% level of year earlier.
The carbon steel domestic order decreased by 4.0% to 3.454 million tonnes in July from a year earlier. The order for export decreased by 5.9% to 2.041 million tonnes. The domestic order decreased by 9.7% to 1.73 million tonnes for manufacturing in July from a year earlier. The order decreased 0.5% to 761,000 tonnes for construction. The order decreased by 11.1% for automobile and by 10.9% to 423,000 tonnes for shipbuilding. The order decreased by 6.5% to 138,000 tonnes for industrial machinery. The order for automobile hit bottom at 442,000 tonnes in May and increased to 616,000 tonnes in June. Japanese carbon steel order decreased by 6.3 % to 22 million tonnes in April-July from same period of 2010.See attached table.