Tokyo — Ordinary carbon steel orders booked by Japanese mills fell 3.1% year on year to 5.52 million mt in July, posting the first decrease since March, and were down 2.3% from the month before, latest Japan Iron & Federation data showed.
A JISF official attributed the decline to heavy rain in western Japan in early July.
"Some mills had to halt production temporarily and distribution was also disrupted by flooding; mills had to adjust their volume of orders," he said, adding steel demand remained strong despite the fall in orders and the July data did not indicate a slowdown.
Orders for domestic supply totaled 3.57 million mt in July, down 2.9% on year and down 2.5% from June, the data showed.
Of this, orders from the construction sector fell 3.9% on year and were down 6.8% on month at 920,000 mt and from the manufacturing sector fell 7.2% on year and were down 2.3% from June at 1.52 million mt.
Export orders totaled 1.95 million mt, down 6.1% on year and edging up 0.8% from June.
A Tokyo-based trader said monthly export orders have mostly hovered below 2 million mt this year as mills prioritized domestic demand.
Orders for hot rolled coils fell 6.5% on year and were down 1.4% on month at 1.73 million mt in July, while for plate rose 15.9% on year and and were up 2.7% from June.
The trader attributed the increase in plate orders to a dip in July 2017 during an outage at Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp's Oita mill.
