Japanese Steel Order Almost Halves in February

Japanese special steel order receipt decreased by 59.7% to 675,000 tonnes in February from a year earlier, which represented year-to-year decline for 5 months in a row and down 0.8% from a previous month, according to Japan Iron and Steel Federation. The order receipt decreased by 64.5% to 416,000 tonnes for home and by 48.5% to 259,000 tonnes for export in February from a year earlier. For home the order dropped to about a third of 1.244 million tonnes, which is the peak in recent years recorded in March 2008.

The domestic order receipt for automobile application decreased by 71.4% to 108,000 tonnes in February from a year earlier while the order for industrial machinery decreased by 76.0% to 37,000 tonnes and the order for steel processed products was lowered by 61.1% to 158,000 tonnes.

For automobile, the order was 400,000 tonnes in October 2007 and remained 370,000-380,000 tonnes per month by October 2008. However in November the order declined to 304,000 tonnes and the order continued dropping as low as 199,000 tonnes in December, 126,000 tonnes in January, and 108,000 tonnes in February.

The carbon steel order receipt decreased by 41.8% to 3.908 million tonnes in February from a year earlier, which showed the year-to-year decline for 7 straight months and fall to below 4 million tonnes for 2 months in a row. The order was 2.676 million tonnes for domestic market, down by 44.1% and the order for export was 1.232 million tonnes, down by 36.2%. The order receipt decreased by 52.0% to 1.131 million tonnes for domestic industries, especially, for automobile decreased by 71.5% to 305,000 tonnes.