Japanese steel mills saw orders recover in October from the previous month but demand remained down sharply year-on-year, according to the Japan Iron and Steel federation (Jisf). Demand is steadily recovering but the hit it took earlier in the year is still impacting mills’ sales, Kallanish notes.

Japanese mills booked 5.83 million tonnes of orders in October, up 4.9% from September but still down -5.6% from the previous year. Over April-October, orders totalled 40.55mt, -3.4% lower y-o-y.

Exports continued to support the figures, growing 7.7% month-on-month to 2.12mt in October, and 2.9% y-o-y to 15.26mt over April-October. Domestic demand recovered just 3.1% in October to 3.64mt, and remained down -8.7% y-o-y at 24.83mt over April-October.

Orders from every sector other than exports over April-October were down y-o-y. October saw y-o-y increases only for transport equipment and residential construction, which was up 0.9% to 163,000t.

Japanese mills saw the downturn coming and took early action to cut production by around 10% from April. This has enabled them to slowly bring down inventory levels and they hope to be able to benefit when demand eventually recovers. They had initially predicted however that demand would return to normal levels by the end of the year. Japan’s recent announcement of yet another period of official recession indicates that this may not happen.