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January 21, 2010

Kobe Steel Output to Rise to Near Record Levels on China Demand

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Kobe Steel Ltd., Japan’s fourth- largest producer, said output will rise to near record levels reached before the global financial crisis, as demand from China and Southeast Asia increases.

Output in the fourth fiscal quarter will rise to as much as 90 percent of the company’s record production, Hiroyoshi Tsumura, an executive in the Kobe, Japan-based company’s iron and steel division, said in an interview in Tokyo. Production peaked at 2.11 million metric tons in the three months to Sept. 30, 2008.

Kobe Steel and other producers in Japan, the world’s second-largest producer of the material, are counting on demand in China, Thailand and Malaysia to offset stagnant domestic growth. The company’s ratio of exports will probably rise to a record 28 percent of domestic output this fiscal year, which ends on March 31, Tsumura said.

“The speed of the recovery in the Asian region including China is much faster than in Japan,” Tsumura said in the interview yesterday. “We should consider the Japanese steel industry’s home market as not just Japan, but all of Asia.”

Japan’s steel exports increased for a fourth month in November, rising 34 percent from a year earlier, according to the Japan Iron and Steel Federation.

The demand from overseas is helping boost output and cushion stagnant sales in Japan. Production at Kobe Steel rose to about 85 percent of the peak in the third quarter from as much as 75 percent in the second, Tsumura said.

Curbing Spending

Kobe Steel said in October it plans to produce 6.4 million tons for the year to March 31.

Japanese manufacturers are curbing capital investment while the new government of Yukio Hatoyama, which is under pressure to control spending, is cutting outlays for public works.

Kobe Steel produced 2.88 million tons of crude steel in the first half, 31 percent below the 4.18 million tons of output in the six months to Sept. 30, 2008.

The company had a loss of 12 billion yen ($131.4 million) in the second quarter ended Sept. 30, narrowing from 33.2 billion yen in the previous three months, as exports improved and inventories fell. The company had net income of 20.9 billion yen a year earlier.

Kobe Steel shares, which are up about 20 percent since Nov. 27, fell 0.6 percent to 175 yen today on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

China’s growth rate accelerated to the fastest pace since 2007 in the fourth quarter, rising 10.7 percent from a year earlier, the government said today. Chinese steel production rose 14 percent to a record 568 million tons in 2009, according to the national bureau of statistics today.

Other Japanese steel makers are increasing their exports. Nippon Steel Corp.’s export ratio climbed to 36.2 percent in the April-to-September period, compared with 31.2 percent in the previous six months, according to a statement on Oct. 29 from the Tokyo-based company, the largest producer in Japan.

To contact the reporter on this story: Masumi Suga in Tokyo at msuga@bloomberg.net; Yasumasa Song in Tokyo at ysong9@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: January 20, 2010 23:52 EST

Source: Bloomberg

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