Japan Raw Steel Output Increases by 27.9% in 1H of F2010

Japanese crude steel output increased by 27.9% to 55.42 million tonnes in first half of fiscal 2010 started April from first half of fiscal 2009, announced by Japan Iron and Steel Federation on Tuesday. The domestic demand increase for manufacturing including automobile and the export was steady. The output increased by 29.8% to 43.27 million tonnes at converters and by 21.6% to 12.15 million tonnes at electric furnaces. The carbon steel output increased by 20.5% to 43.02 million tonnes and the special steel output increased by 62.4% to 12.4 million tonnes.

The crude steel output increased by 12.9% to 27.35 million tonnes in July-September compared with same period of 2009 while the output decreased by 2.6% from April-June. From April-June, the output at converters decreased by 0.9% to 21.54 million tonnes and by 8.4% to 5.81 million tonnes at electric furnaces due to the trouble at blast furnace, outage of electric furnace steel makers in summer and demand slowdown in overseas.

The output in September increased by 11.7% to 9.23 million tonnes from a year earlier, which increased for 11 months in a row. The output increased by 11.3% to 7.12 million tonnes at converters and by 12.8% to 2.06 million tonnes at electric furnaces.