Japanese Plate Export Increases by 17.3% in February

Japanese plate steel export increased by 17.3% to 313,467 tonnes in February from a year earlier, which showed year-on-year increase for 8 months in a row, according to Ministry of Finance. The export decreased by 10.0% from January. However, the export volume was more than 300,000 tonnes per month since July 2009 through February 2010.

Japanese plate export increased by 12.1% to 165,143 tonnes to South Korea in February from a year earlier while decreased by 17.1% to 58,464 tonnes to China. The export unit price declined by 1,000 yen to around 60,000 yen per tonne in Febryart from January.

Japanese plate import increased by around 3.4 times to 12,655 tonnes in February from a year earlier while the import decreased by 59.1% from January. The import increased by 93.7% to 4,557 tonnes from China while increased by around 26.5 times to 5,750 tonnes from Thailand and increased by around 2.2 times to 2,347 tonnes from South Korea.