Japan’s domestic carbon steel sales hit 50-year low in FY19
According to statistics from Japan Iron and Steel Federation (JISF), carbon steel sales in Japan’s local market decreased by 9.9% year on year to 39.7million tons in the fiscal year 2019 (April 2019-March 2020), which was the first year in the past five decades with a volume lower than 40 million tons.
The decrease in Japan's carbon steel sales was mainly because of the China-US trade friction, an increase of consumption tax from 8% to 10% from October 2019, natural disasters like typhoons across Japan, as well as low domestic steel sales caused by end-users’ operations.
In addition, steel sales were also affected by the impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Thus, the fiscal year 2019 was a difficult year for all Japanese steel producers.
