Rebar Market Price in Downtrend, Tokyo

Market price of concrete reinforcing steel bar is lowering around Tokyo. Dealers’ reselling price for base sized products is around 57,000 yen per tonne by direct delivery from rebar makers to the users and around 63,000 yen per tonne by the sales of dealers’ inventory. Rebar makers and dealers continue to be suffered from low order receipt and shipment in November. Some dealers are offering very low price with little demand and severe price order from general contractors. The demand is expected not to recover in a short term from construction and civil engineering. The market price is likely to keep downward.

Rebar makers’ order receipts in October seemed to be at 120,000-150,000 tonnes around Tokyo, which was 310,000 tonnes in July, 290,000 tonnes in August and 170,000 tonnes in September. The volume worsened to the level as low as the bottom in January-March 2009.

Local rebar makers are widely decreasing their outputs to around 200,000 tonnes per month in response to low demand. However, the demand is shrinking even more than their output reductions. At the same time, product inflow is increasing from other areas. As a result, local rebar makers hold 2.5-3 months order backlogs.

Price down is remarkable at distributors’ inventory sales. Some distributors offer as low as 61,000-62,000 yen per tonne. Meanwhile, even cheaper products are inflowing from other areas.

Ferrous scrap market price recently rebounded after 1.5 months. If steel product market price continues to lower, makers and dealers would be suffered from narrow margin.