China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼), Taiwan’s largest integrated steelmaker, reported its first loss in 47 years, as a decline in sales volume of steel products led to lower operating revenue.
Additionally, lower dividends from the company’s mining investments and higher finance costs also resulted in a decline in non-operating income and helped push it into the red last year, the company said in a statement.
Last year’s pretax loss was NT$4.684 billion (US$149.6 million), compared with a pretax profit of NT$4.577 billion the previous year, the company said.
Photo: CNA
Chinese oversupply continued to affect the global steel market, while the imposition of US tariffs under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act added further pressure to steelmakers worldwide, and CSC was no exception.
The company had remained in the red for eight months in a row from April to November last year, before posting a pretax profit of NT$378.76 million last month due to improved profitability at the company’s steel business and the contribution from its investment in the Zhongneng (中能) offshore wind farm off Changhua County, it said.
The company said its cumulative revenue totaled NT$317.155 billion last year, down from NT$360.535 billion in 2024, with shipments of its steel products reaching 7.38 million tonnes, also down from 7.58 million tonnes the year before.
Although traditional industries like steel, machinery and plastics continue to face weak end-market demand, CSC expects the domestic steel market to recover from its slump and rise steadily this year, it said.
That is because market uncertainty continues to ease after the US and Taiwan reached a tentative trade deal earlier this month to cut the tariff rate on Taiwanese goods to 15 percent, from the 20 percent announced in August last year, which would benefit most of the downstream steel-related industries, such as machine tools, machinery, automotive components, hand tools and plumbing hardware, the company said.
End-market demand is also expected to improve amid strong demand for artificial intelligence servers and the progress of advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes, it said.
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