Nippon Steel to Hike Domestic Sheet Steel by 10,000 yen/t

Nippon Steel announced on Wednesday the firm increases the selling price of hot, pickling, cold and coated sheet steel by 5,000 yen per tonne for domestic buyers including distributors, pipe makers, forming makers and sheet processors for November shipment. The firm already noticed the additional hike to distributors while the firm started negotiation with the users. The firm tries to improve the profitability through total 35,000 yen of hike including 20,000 yen in April and 10,000 yen in July. The firm is in negotiation with appliances and office equipment makers to increase the contract price by 15,000 yen per tonne for October shipment after 20,000-25,000 yen hike in April. The firm seeks US$ 250-300 per tonne hike for offshore transplants of Japanese makers and got positive answer from some buyers. Nippon Steel sees the actual sheet steel demand keeps firm when the firm is getting strong order from automobile industry and some plate users, which try to use hot strip mill product as alternate of plate. The firm expects the sheet supply gets tighter when the firm builds steel inventory preparing for blast furnace relining at Oita works while POSCO plans repair of mini-mill in October and other Asian makers have limited additional capacity. Nippon Steel also tries to improve the lower domestic price level than US$ 1,000 per tonne level in USA and Europe. The firm also passes the higher cost for raw materials on the selling price when the raw materials cost could increase by 3.5 trillion yen for Japanese steel industry for the year ending March 2009 from previous year.