China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼) is raising steel prices for September delivery by an average of 1.49 percent month-on-month as COVID-19 economic stimulus packages and reopening markets boost demand worldwide.
The price hikes from the nation’s biggest steelmaker came on the heels of a US$20 per tonne increase from its Japanese peers for steel exports and a US$25 per tonne increase from South Korean makers for the local market, CSC said in a statement on Friday last week.
In China, the recovering automotive market and new infrastructure construction projects have raised steel prices to high levels, CSC said.
Photo: Tyrone Siu / Reuters
To accelerate economic recovery, Beijing plans to invest 1.2 trillion yuan (US$171.62 billion) on public infrastructure projects, which would spur demand for steel, the company said.
Flood reconstruction efforts in China have also stimulated steel demand, it said.
“It is clear that the global economy is moving in a positive direction, as the purchasing managers’ indices in Europe, the US, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and Taiwan have all trended up after they started reopening businesses in June,” CSC said.
“Demand for steel is growing,” the company added.
CSC said that global iron ore prices have been hovering at high levels, pushing up manufacturing costs for steelmakers.
The uptrend in iron ore prices is an indicator that the world’s steel industry is recovering, it added.
The Kaohsiung-based steelmaker said it only raised prices mildly, with an aim to divert the risk of order decreases as customers tend to buy more steel overseas when the New Taiwan dollar appreciates against the US dollar, which cuts importers’ purchasing costs.
Over the past month, the NT dollar has risen 0.59 percent to NT$29.593 against the US dollar as of Friday last week, from NT$29.77 on June 15, central bank data showed.
Based on the latest adjustments, prices of hot-rolled steel and cold-rolled steel are to increase NT$300 per tonne, marking the third straight month of price hikes, CSC said.
Hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel are used in auto manufacturing and building construction.
The NT$300 price increase also applies to hot-rolled steel slabs and hot-dipped, zinc-galvanized sheets, which are used in the production of consumer electronics and other high-tech devices such as PCs, the company said.
The price for electro-galvanized sheets is to rise by NT$500 per tonne, the biggest hike among CSC’s steel products.
Over the past seven months, the company has struggled to eke out profits due to slumping prices and shrinking demand.
It posted pretax losses of NT$534.99 million (US$18.08 million) for May, greater than April’s pretax losses of NT$493.16 million.
CSC last month told shareholders that it aimed to return to the black by the end of this year.
STRONG INTEREST: Analysts have pointed to optimism in TSMC’s growth prospects in the artificial intelligence era as the cause of the rising number of shareholders The number of people holding shares of chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) hit a new high last week despite a decline in its stock price, the Taiwan Depository and Clearing Corp (TDCC, 台灣集保) said. The number of TSMC shareholders rose to 2.46 million as of Friday, up 75,536 from a week earlier, TDCC data showed. The stock price fell 1.34 percent during the same week to close at NT$1,840 (US$57.55). The decline in TSMC’s share price resulted from volatility in global tech stocks, driven by rising international crude oil prices as the war against Iran continues. Dealers said
PRICE HIKES: The war in the Middle East would not significantly disrupt supply in the short term, but semiconductor companies are facing price surges for materials Taiwan’s semiconductor companies are not facing imminent supply disruptions of essential chemicals or raw materials due to the war in the Middle East, but surges in material costs loom large, industry association SEMI Taiwan said yesterday. The association’s comments came amid growing concerns that supplies of helium and other key raw materials used in semiconductor production could become a choke point after Qatar shut down its liquefied natural gas (LNG) production and helium output earlier this month due to the conflict. Qatar is the second-largest LNG supplier in the world and accounts for about 33 percent of global helium output. Helium is
China is clamping down on fertilizer exports to protect its domestic market, industry sources said, putting an additional strain on global markets that were already grappling with shortages caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran. China is among the largest fertilizer exporters — shipping more than US$13 billion of it last year — and it has a history of controlling exports to keep prices low for farmers. Shipments through the war-blocked Strait of Hormuz account for about one-third of the sea-borne supply. This month, Beijing banned exports of nitrogen-potassium fertilizer blends and certain phosphate varieties, sources said. The ban, which has not
AMAZING ABUNDANCE: Elon Musk has announced plans for a new facility in Texas which would manufacture chips for Tesla and SpaceX to use in robotics and AI Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and space data centers — would be built in Austin and jointly run by Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX). Musk, the chief executive officer of the two companies, said he would start off with an “advanced technology fab” in Austin that would have all of the equipment necessary to make chips of any kind. The project would call for one day supporting 1 terawatt (TW) of computing power per year, the amount Musk expects the companies to
RSS