Nippon Steel to Raise Anticorrosion Steel Extra Charge in April

Nippon Steel Corporation announced on Monday the firm raises extra charge for anticorrosion steel products applied to bridges, including plates, hot sheets, cold sheets, bars and wires, by 10,000 yen per tonne from April contracts and extra charge for zinc series shot primer by 15%. The firm could not absorb higher material costs by themselves such for nickel, copper and zinc. NSC revises the extra charge for anticorrosion steels for the first time. The firm already offered bridge fabricators the hike. Anticorrosion steels don’t need coating and painting. Bridge fabricators appreciate cost down effects by anticorrosion steels and increase the adoption in recent years. The adoption volume of anticorrosion steel by bridge fabricators is expected to double to 192,000 tonnes in fiscal 2006 ending March 2007 compared with 10 years ago. The adoption rate is expected to up to 34% at the end of fiscal 2006, 3 times of 10 years ago. Anticorrosion steel contains nickel at 0.05-0.3% and copper at 0.2-0.5%. Nickel price currently jumped up to about 10 times from recent bottom and copper price also stays high. NSC prospects nonferrous metal markets would keep the high level for a while and decided to pass higher material costs on the selling price. NSC will increase zinc series shot primer surfacer extra by 15% when zinc market currently jumped up to about 5 times from recent bottom, which is the material of coating compound.