Nippon Steel restarts its Oita plate mill in August

2017-05-25

May 23, 2017 - Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal (NSMMC) aims to restart the idle plate mill at its Oita works on the Japanese island of Kyushu in early August.

The mill, which caught fire on 5 January, was previously expected to come back on line in September. The company estimates that the accident will put a 30 billion yen ($271.6 million) hole in its earnings, most of which was incurred in the financial year ending 31 March.

To compensate for halted operations, the steelmaker said it plans to increase production at its other mills. The mill's outage does not so far appear to have resulted in any additional slab being offered by the producer to the merchant market. NSMMC is likely to be stockpiling slab it cannot physically re-roll at its other plate mills for when Oita is back up and running, market participants said.

The company has plate mills in Nagoya, Kimitsu and Kashima, but Oita has the highest capacity In the 2015 financial year, Oita produced 2.4 million tons of plate, while combined output from the firm's other operations hit 2.6 million tons.