Tokyo Steel Lefts All Steel Price Unchanged

Tokyo Steel Manufacturing announced on Monday the firm left the steel selling price unchanged for all items for distributors for July order, which was first freeze in 2 months. The firm sees the steel market is slow both for products and raw materials when ferrous scrap price couldn’t decrease more and steel price is low at home and abroad due to higher offshore steel inventory and slow domestic building demand. The firm tries to watch the market trend without price change.

The firm sees domestic steel demand will recover for automobile but the domestic building steel demand started to move mainly for delayed building projects while the demand is still slow. The firm recognizes offshore steel supply gets loose due to overstock despite of high raw materials cost.

The firm couldn’t get new export order under the slow market. The firm offers FOB US$ 800 per tonne for hot rolled coil and US$ 890 for H-beam while the market consensus is US$ 700 for hot coil and the lower price is US$ 670-680. The firm completes export order backlog by the end of June when the firm couldn’t get new order in the unprofitable market.

The firm plans 200,000 tonnes of production both in June and July. The firm plans 45,000 tonnes of production at Tahara plant in June when the plant improves operation rate. The firm plans regular maintenance in and after July as usual summer starting the maintenance outage from mid-July at Utsunomiya plant. The firm expects the nighttime focused operations can meet peak cut target of power consumption.

The firm left the spot selling price unchanged. The price is 78,000 yen per tonne for H-beam, 62,000 yen for concrete reinforcing steel bar and 75,000 yen for plate steel.