China Steel Corp (CSC), Taiwan’s largest steel mill headquartered in Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, has decided to cut list prices of its major steel products by another TWD 1,000-1,200/tonne ($33.4-40/t) on month for local sales in September to ease the burden on its downstream customers, according to a company release published on August 16.
The integrated steel mill made its decision to respond to the impact of low-priced steel products being imported into Taiwan, and to help its customers improve their competitiveness globally and so ease their financial pressure, CSC pointed out in the release.
Although Taiwan’s economy has performed relatively steadily so far this year and that pundits expect its GDP to grow 3.76% this year, the performance during the second half year could be undermined by more challenges with the impact of the slowdown in the global economy, the company warned.
In view of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the mounting fears of recession worldwide and steady rises in inflation, in July the International Monetary Fund had lowered its forecast for 2022 global economic growth to 3.2%, down 0.4 percentage point from the previous forecast in April, CSC noted.
Steed demand from end-users has weakened with the depressed state of global manufacturing industries and this year’s extreme weather. “Steel consuming enterprises are trying to reduce their (steel) stocks at hand to ease their operation pressure,” CSC said in the release.
As for supply, steel mills in many countries and regions, such as Europe and North America, China mainland and other countries in Asia, have started to conduct annual maintenance or trim their production to ease the imbalance between supply and demand, according to CSC.
However, global steel prices may bottom out and then recover in the future, the steelmaker said, as steel demand may recover after the summer break in the Europe, and the increases in electricity and gas prices have encouraged some steel mills in the U.S. to lift their steel sales prices to reflect rises in their steelmaking costs.
Besides, China’s central government has also increased investment in infrastructure to give a boost to economic growth. Baoshan Iron & Steel, the listed arm of the world’s largest steelmaker China Baowu Steel Group, cut its list prices for carbon steel hot-rolled coil (HRC) by another Yuan 100/tonne ($14.8/t) for September domestic sales, as reported. But the size of the decrease was smaller compared with the on-month reduction of Yuan 200/t for sales this month, Mysteel Global notes.
Written by Nancy Zheng, zhengmm@mysteel.com
Note : This article has been published in accordance with an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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