Over the past 10 years, Korea’s specialty steel bar export headed to Japan consistently improved as a whole, but imports therefrom moved ups and downs. According to the Korea Iron and Steel Association, special steel bar export to Japan recoded 15,779 tons in 2008, 13,536 tons in 2009 and 33,542 tons in 2010, maintaining over 30,000 tons level. On the contrary, import from Japan exceeded 100,000 tons a year over the four years in a row between 2014 and 2017, but last year’s level showed below 100,000 tons.
When it comes to export toward China, the export tonnage continued to surpass 20,000 tons a year from 2017 through 2018, but import from China declined sharply beginning 2017 although 1.0 million tons arrived from 2015 and 2016 in total.
In case of export to Japan, the export quantities increased, but the absolute volume was not so big because the Japanese specialty steel industry is so strong as to compete with imported materials and the consuming industries tend to be of less interest in import.
Import from Japan depends heavily on the demand for molding steel and tool steel. Korea’s molding industry stepped up its position to the second exporting country in the world, contributing to the export improvement over the four years since.
However, in 2018, the specialty steel bar import from Japan decreased as the molding export and production dropped together mixed with the domestic slwodown.
Korea’s specialty steel bar export to China has remained unchanged staying around 20,000 tons since 2018, but import is largely affected by the conditions of domestic market as well as Chinese market. Korea’s specialty steel bar import from China stayed around 700,000 tons, while increased sharply beginning 2014 when the slump accelerated in the leading industries including construction, automotive and shipbuilding. Between 2015 and 2016, the import quantities exceeded 1.0 million tons since the consuming industries used to seek after low-priced imported materials in order to save the costs.
Source: Steel&Metal News |
