Japan Steels Expand Hot Strip & Plate Mills Products in F2007

Japanese plate steel output increased by 10.5% to 13.39 million tonnes in fiscal year 2007 ended March 2008 from a year earlier. The makers increased the output to meet strong demand from manufacturers including shipbuilding, industrial and construction machinery and energy industry users along with major building construction. Japanese hot strip mill products output increased by 4.0% to 48.49 million tonnes under strong demand from manufacturers.The top 2 plate makers including JFE Steel with 34.6% share and Nippon Steel with 33.5% share represented 70% of the national output in fiscal 2007 as fiscal 2006. JFE Steel increased the output by 8.3% to 4.64 million tonnes while Nippon Steel’s output increased by 9.5% to 4.49 million tonnes. Kobe Steel increased the output by 11.0% to 1.47 million tonnes and Sumitomo Metal Industries increased the output by 9.7% to 1.29 million tonnes. Tokyo Steel Manufacturing, which started commercial production in early 2007, increased the output to more than 4 times at 330,000 tonnes in fiscal 2007 from fiscal 2006. Chubu Steel Plate’s output increased by 8.3% to 680,000 tonnes and Nakayama Steel Works’ output increased by 17.7% to 490,000 tonnes.JFE Steel increased the hot strip mill products’ output by 6.2% to 17 millions tonnes in fiscal 2007 from fiscal 2006 increasing the national output share by 0.7 percentage points to 35.4%. The largest maker of Nippon Steel increased the output by 3.5% but the output share decreased by 0.1 point to 39.5%. The output increased by 2.6% for Sumitomo Metals and by 3.6% for Nisshin Steel while Kobe Steel reduced the output by 0.2%. Tokyo Steel’s hot strip mill products output increased due to higher export in fiscal 2007 from fiscal 2006. The firm kept 1.8% production share in Japan. Nakayama Steel Works reduced the output by 3.5% due to slow building market reducing the share by 0.2 points.