Nippon Steel to Seek 40 million tonnes or More Output in Future

Nippon Steel’s president Akio Mimura said the effort to improve the corporate value is not enough to keep the stake holders’ value when Mittal Steel and Arcelor to merge becoming mega scale maker with annual 120 million tonnes of raw steel output. He said Nippon Steel keeps trying to focus on high valued steel products as no.1 supplier in total power. However, he said the volume is also important and the firm tries to increase the output to more than 40 million tonnes. Mr. Mimura said the firm expands the raw steel output capacity to annual 35 million tonnes for itself after the firm expands the blast furnace at Oita in fiscal 2008 ending March 2009 totaling 40 million tonnes of volume including affiliates and alliance based supply ability. He said the firm will expand the output capacity by 7 million tonnes from 28 million tonnes for itself in 2000 with only 250 billion yen of investment. Mr. Mimura said the firm might acquire other company in friendly manner only if the firm can share the mind to focus on high valued steel products. Mr. Mimura said the firm has no option to terminate relationship with Arcelor-Mittal and he believes the new company will keep Arcelor’s business model including strong relationship with users and heavy R&D effort. He will confirm the new company’s policy by direct talk with the management. He said Nippon Steel tries to accelerate the talk with the new company to expand the galvanizing line at the joint venture in USA.