Japan Steel Import Drops by 42.0% in January

Japanese carbon steel import decreased by 42.0% to 182,853 tonnes in January from a year earlier and decreased by 34.0% from a previous month, which showed decline 3 months in a row, announced by Japan Iron and Steel Federation on Friday. The users and dealers reduced the procurement due to the inventory adjustment under very slow steel demand since fall 2008. The import of hot rolled, cold rolled and galvanizing steel sheet, of which inventory is record high, decreased by 47.3%.

Asian steel makers in China, South Korea and Taiwan try to increase the export to Japan, in which steel price is higher than international price. However, the import would be at lower level for a while when hot, cold and coated sheet inventory was the highest level at more than 4.7 million tonnes in January and it would take time to adjust the inventory.

Japanese hot rolled sheets import decreased by 57.4% to 63,746 tonnes in January from a year ago while the cold rolled sheet import decreased by 38.1% to 47,169 tonnes and the galvanizing steel import decreased by 15.9% to 21,732 tonnes. The special steel import increased by 15.8% to 18,632 tonnes while the secondary products import decreased by 3.7% to 53,344 tonnes in January from a year earlier.

The import from South Korea deceased by 40.1% to 107,335 tonnes from a year earlier while the import from China decreased by 63.4% to 21,255 tonnes and the import from Taiwan declined by 19.2% to 49,541 tonnes.