Japan Cemented Carbide Tool Shipment Halves in January

Japanese domestic shipment of cemented carbide tools declined by 50.5% to 14.073 billion yen in January from a year earlier, according to Japan Cemented Carbide Tool Manufacturers’ Association. The shipment represented year-on-year decline for 6 straight months when automobile and electronic appliance makers entered wide-range output reductions and shrank capital expenditures worldwide. The shipment value was 30.721 billion yen with last year-on-year increase in July 2008, almost as high as record 31.61 billion yen in March 2008. The shipment dropped by 54.2% in a half year.

The shipment value of cutting tools accounted for below 10 billion yen for the first time since January 2002. The shipment volume of insert chips, the main item among cutting tools, decreased by 57.1% compared with record 24.876 million chips in July 2008. The demand sharply weakened from both domestic and overseas markets with downturn in auto parts and printed circuit boards manufacturing.

The shipment of sintered diamond and CBN (cubic boron nitride) tools showed almost 60% down in January from a year earlier, those which are used to manufacture difficult-to-cut materials such as hardened steels for bearings or heat resistant alloys for air plane parts. As to wear resistant tools, the shipment of cemented carbide molds was impacted by slow investment by manufacturing industries and cheaper products inflowing from overseas.

With these backgrounds, the annual tool shipment totaled 35.422 billion yen for 2008, which decreased by 4.2% from 2007 and represented first year-on-year decline since 2002. The half-year shipment marked the record high for January-June but turned sharp decline in and after August.