Japan Cemented Carbide Tool Shipment Keeps Plus Trend in March

Japanese domestic shipment value of cemented carbide tools kept year-to-year and month-to-month plus trend in March. The shipment value was 26.3 billion yen, 14.6% year-to-year plus and 7.6% month-to-month plus, according to Japan Cemented Carbide Tool Manufacturers’ Association.

Several major tool makers were forced to suspend their main plants due to Japan Earthquake in March. In addition, automobile industry, the main consumer of cemented carbide tools, was also forced temporary operation stoppage. However, tool shipment could sustain the pre-disaster level mainly due to the makers’ inventory shipment. The association analyzed another factor that tool users seemed to increase speculative procurement since some of tool makers announced price hike effective for April.

With the monthly figure for March, Japanese annual shipment of cemented carbide tools totaled 283.6 billion yen for fiscal 2010 ended in March 2011. The shipment value increased by 39.3% from the previous fiscal year and represented the first plus in 3 years. The shipment value could also reach 280 billion yen, the forecast released by the association. Meanwhile, the shipment was still 80% level against the record value marked in fiscal 2007.

Distinctly, the shipment volume of indexable insert chip, the main item among cutting tools, exceeded record 273 million chips of fiscal 2007 and hit the new yearly record in fiscal 2010. The demand sharply recovered from automobile and machine tool industries while the export was remarkably strong.

In the first six months of fiscal 2011, Japanese cemented carbide tool shipment is likely to slow down when automakers are largely decreasing car productions after Japan Earthquake.