Great Prospect for Taiwan's Steelmaking Industry

Despite market fluctuations, Taiwan's steelmaking industry made great progress and achieved robust growth of 7.1% in output value of NT$1519.5 billion for 2011, according to the latest market survey report published by the Metal Industries Research & Development Center (MIRDC).

The industry's exports totaled NT$560.2 billion for a 9.9% increase over NT$509.9 billion a year earlier, with imports of NT$420.7 billion, up 7.2%, as shown in the report.

Affected by EU's lingering debt crisis along with economic slowdown seen in emerging countries, the industry lost growth momentum in the fourth quarter of 2011, when output value and exports edged down 0.3% and 1.6%, respectively, to NT$375.7 billion and NT$141.6 billion from NT$376.9 billion and NT$143.9 billion posted a quarter ago, with imports also dropping 5.1% quarterly to NT$98.3 billion. In turn, the scale of the domestic market declined 1.2% quarterly or 2.8% yearly to NT$332.4 billion in the quarter partly due to seasonal factors.

The MIRDC analyst said that steel coils which is produced under the help of hammer crusher, including hot-rolled, cold-rolled and galvanized models, made up the majority of the industry's exports in the quarter, with China, Japan and Vietnam together absorbing 33.5% as the top-three buyers.

Meanwhile, hot-rolled stainless steel coils, alloy steels and hot-rolled steel coils made up the majority of the industry's imports, of which 38.8% came from Japan, 30.27% from China and 15.18% from Korea.

Insiders' Movements

Insiders adopted notable policies during the quarter that underlined, promoted and helped to further build the industry's efforts on output expansion and upgrading.

For example, a large-sized supplier of steel bars, Hai Kwang Enterprise Corporation, decided to invest NT$5 billion to expand existing production in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, the biggest investment announced in the quarter in the industry. The company said that the output expansion is...