Taiwan's CSC rolls over flats prices to Japan for Nov-Jan

China Steel Corp (CSC), Taiwan's top steel producer and a major carbon steel exporter to Japan, has decided to remain its flats prices unchanged shipments to Japan over November-January 2022, though it will continue to negotiate with those customers that have yet fully accepted its price increments over August-October, a CSC official in Osaka shared on September 28.

"We have not reached our targeted price levels, but for those that have agreed on only partial rises, they will need to pay higher for stable supplies as our production cost has increased substantially," he added.

As of now, some Japanese customers have not agreed or fully agreed on CSC's price increases to around $1,000/tonne CFR or above Yen 110,000/t CFR for hot-rolled coil (HRC) August-October shipments, and CSC only managed to raise its HRC price by Yen 40,000/t with some of them.

CSC's steel export volume to Japan over November-January 2022 will be flat from that over August-October, as it will still need to prioritize domestic needs, besides, "steel sales to Japan are not attractive in pricing, though the full acceptance on previous price increases by all our Japanese customers may enable use to allocate some extra tonnage," the CSC official said.

CSC reduced its steel flats exports to Japan by about 40% on average over August-October, which was on top of a 30% cut in the prior three months, Mysteel Global noted.

The latest data from the Japan Iron & Steel Federation showed that Japan imported 255,966 tones of HRC from Taiwan in January-July, down 21% on year, among which the volume for July alone was 28,501 tonnes, down 29.3% on year and 20.7% lower on month.

For the rest of 2021, CSC has raised its list prices for sales in Taiwan, for both October and October-December quarter to partially transfer its higher costs and to narrow their gaps with global levels, as reported.

This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.