Rebar Price Drops to 88,000 yen/t in Tokyo

Concrete reinforcing steel bar market price is weak tone at 88,000 yen per tonne at the dealers’ inventory sales around Tokyo. Dealers are trading with reference to rebar makers’ selling price at 85,000 yen in December. The market price is expected to drop when users are passing the request of price cut to rebar makers.

The order is same level from users to rebar makers in December from November, which is expected to keep low. There is possible that users order some size products due to makers’ operation abeyance for the year-end and New Year.

The market price is more anticipated to fall in near future when ferrous crap market price decreased to below 20,000 yen per tonne. Tokyo Steel Manufacturing, Japanese biggest electric furnace maker raised rebar selling price by 2,000 yen per tonne in January order, although other makers’ selling price is cheaper than Tokyo Steel’s selling price by around 30,000 yen per tonne. General contractors are restricting the purchasing volume of rebar and started the purchase of it at last when they use it in the first half of January 2009. General contractors are likely to keep spot purchase when they forecast bottom price for rebar is over 60,000 yen per tonne.

The point for market price is the rebar price announcement by the makers around Tokyo in last week.