Stainless Steel Sheet Price Decreases in Tokyo

The market price of cold-rolled stainless steel sheet is decreasing by easy degrees at 350,000 yen per tonne for base sized SUS304 and at 230,000-240,000 yen for base sized SUS430 around Tokyo. Nickel price became stable. But the sheet price is decreasing when dealers are disposing the inventory. The demand of chrome series sheet is dropped for automobile rapidly. A large dealer source said the inventory is seemed to keep high. Anticipate of a fall is came to the forefront when ferrochrome price in such as Europe decreased by 57% compared with October-December 2008. Dealers’ shipping is slow around Tokyo due to softening demand and dealers’ profit is getting worse. A major dealer source said the firm is going through the effort to reduce degree of deficit. Dealers are wary of deals for credit control.