Steel Plate Market Price Maintains Downward, Tokyo

Steel plate market price is weak at 105,000-110,000 yen per tonne for standard sized products with 19 millimeters thick, 5 feet width and 10 feet length and at 110,000-120,000 yen for cut processed materials around Tokyo. Demand maintains stagnant from constructions, construction machines and industrial machines. A shearing processor said the users tend to postpone plate procurement when the market price is likely to decline more.

Plate demand is unlikely to recover for a while, especially weak from middle- and small-size buildings. Cut processed material demand is also impacted when Japanese construction machine makers continue output reductions. Operation rate at shearing processors, whose main customers are construction machine makers, stays at below 50%.

Dealers currently hold about 1.5-time plate inventories compared with a year earlier though dealers are decreasing or skipping orders to plate makers. A shearing processor said it is difficult to secure order receipt volume despite of price down when actual demand is plunging. Dealers take precedence to sales volume. The market price would continue downward.