Tokyo’s H-beam Market to Continue to be Quiet

The H-beam market in the Tokyo area, Eastern Japan, continues to be quiet. The price is 75,000-76,000 yen per tonne for base size of 200×100 millimeters. The cautious stances of the blast furnace steel makers in the area who continue H-beam production according to the demand situation is effective in the price maintenance. Each of the makers will perform the production decrease in January-March as the drop-off months by around 10% compared with last October-December in order to make the market stabilize. Tightness of the supply-demand is likely to continue. The H-beam stock ratio of Tokiwakai, which is Nippon Steel’s distributor association, was 2.34 months last January. Then, that became 1.96 months in June. Afterward, that has been 1-month-mark since August despite that’s recovery to 2.02 months in July. Further, while the warehousing volume in October increased sharply by 39% from the previous month, it was below the delivery volume from warehouses. As for distributors’ H-beam stock, some of the sizes have no stock for distributors. But distributors can’t perform the price hikes since there is the situation that it is possible to buy the needed products from several distributors. Furthermore, according to research of Tokyo Steel Product Dealers Association, total volume of sales of H-beams from last June is 40,000-46,000 tonnes. Distributors secure their profits to some degree. The demand in January-March won’t decline sharply according to distributors. The current price range is likely to continue.