China Steel Corp (中鋼) yesterday announced that it would keep domestic steel prices unchanged for deliveries next month to comply with changes in international markets and customer needs.
The decision to stay put following four consecutive months of price hikes came as the firm took customers’ inventory write-down expenses into account, the nation’s largest steelmaker said in a statement. Galvanised Steel Coil
![China Steel to keep prices unchanged - Taipei Times](http://cdn.globalso.com/jshdsteel/image22.jpg)
China Steel said that in the second quarter, it would only raise prices of steel plates used in vessels, and A36 and SS400 steel plates used in structural applications by NT$300 (US$9.5) per tonne, leaving the rest unchanged.
The firm reached the decision after considering several factors, including domestic downstream customers’ actual demand and order-taking schedule, and the steel market’s tepid recovery and confidence toward the economic outlook, it said.
China Steel expects steel demand to pick up after May and believes that potential US interest rate cuts starting from June would be a shot in the arm for the industry, it said.
“Cutting interest rates will promote investment, drive consumption and refresh the economy. It will be helpful for the real-estate market, and machinery equipment and vehicle sales, and it will also drive the demand for steel,” China Steel said.
The firm said the overall steel market remains stable in terms of supply-demand dynamics and is expected to show sequential improvement in the coming quarters.
On the other hand, global steel prices are expected to rise in the second quarter following consolidation in the first quarter, China Steel said.
Prices have shown signs of a turnaround, the firm said, citing announcements by US steelmakers Cleveland-Cliffs Inc and Nucor Corp on Thursday last week to raise hot-rolled steel prices by US$28 to US$44 per tonne, along with the 10th consecutive price increase next month for high-carbon hot-rolled steel coils by China’s Baowu Steel Group Ltd (寶武鋼鐵).
China Steel on Monday reported that consolidated revenue in the first two months of this year increased 5.91 percent year-on-year to NT$60.89 billion.
Shipments reached 1.93 million tonnes in the first two months, the company said, adding that it expects 2.7 million to 2.8 million tonnes of shipments in the first quarter and an even higher amount in the second quarter as the industry enters a peak season.
SOLID FOUNDATION: The German firm cited Taiwan’s dynamic innovation ecosystem, such as ‘highly skilled R&D talent and strong industry clusters,’ as reasons for investment Infineon Technologies AG, a world-leading automotive chip supplier, yesterday said it plans to set up a NT$1.2 billion (US$37.05 million) research and development (R&D) center in Taiwan with government funding of NT$480 million to develop next-generation Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips for electric vehicles in collaboration with local partners. Infineon is the latest among a slew of global semiconductor companies seeking to operate R&D centers in Taiwan given a resilient semiconductor ecosystem. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) makes advanced automotive chips for Infineon and NXP Semiconductors NV in Taiwan. Under similar government initiatives, Nvidia Corp has set up its first artificial intelligence
LIMITING THE IMPACT: Due to the discovery at the site of the firm’s first advanced packaging plant in Chiayi, plans are being made to begin work on its second plant Construction of a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) packaging plant in Chiayi County has been halted following the discovery of suspected archeological ruins, local authorities said on Monday. The discovery was made at the end of last month, during construction of the first of two planned packaging plants using sophisticated chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) technology at the Chiayi Science Park (嘉義科學園區) — the Chiayi section of the Southern Taiwan Science Park (南部科學園區). Construction on the plant only began last month, and it was scheduled to begin production in 2028. In accordance with the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act (文化資產保存法), a review committee convened early this
Lasse Stolley was looking for a change in scenery after a planned apprenticeship fell through. So nearly two years ago the teenager began living on German trains. The epic journey has taken the 17-year-old from a small community in Germany’s windswept far north to the country’s southern borders and beyond. Setting off in August 2022, he has traveled a staggering 650,000 kilometers, the equivalent of going around the Earth more than 15 times, while sitting on trains for more than 6,700 hours. “Being able to decide every day where I want to go is simply great — that’s freedom,” Stolley said in a
![China Steel to keep prices unchanged - Taipei Times](http://cdn.globalso.com/jshdsteel/3105.jpg)
Carbon Steel Plate Falling prices and weak demand are the main difficulties facing German companies in China, the German Chamber of Commerce said in a report yesterday, adding that European tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) are counterproductive. China is one of Germany’s top trading partners, accounting for a significant portion of its sales in the past few years. However, 61 percent of 186 German companies surveyed by the business body said that “pressure on prices” is by far the biggest problem they face in China. Weak demand linked to the slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy and geopolitical tensions also ranked among the top