Japan Special Steel Demand to Rise by 3.7% in Jan-Mar

Japanese demand for hot rolled special steel products is expected at 1.524 million tonnes for January-March 2010, up by 3.7% from October-December 2009 and by 93.1% from the same period of 2009, according to the forecast by Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry. The demand would represent quarter-to-quarter plus for 4 straight quarters while first year-to-year plus in 6 quarters.

Domestic demand is expected to increase quarter-to-quarter for carbon steels applied to machines and alloy steels applied to structures. The demand owes the recovery to automobile output increase and seasonal volume growth in January-March, the last quarter of Japanese fiscal year. Meanwhile, demand for stainless steels is likely to decrease along downtrend of nickel market price.

As to the export, demand is estimated to increase for alloy steels applied to structures of automobiles and energy industries while to decrease for stainless steel sheets.