Japanese steel producer Kobe Steel has announced that it is providing Austria's leading steelmaker Voestalpine Stahl GmbH (Voestalpine) with technology to produce fingerprint-resistant electro-galvanized steel sheet.
Accordingly, Voestalpine plans to conduct mill trials and customer trials starting in 2010, following which it will be able to produce this innovative steel sheet for potential flat screen television manufacturers in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and other central European countries, where many Japanese and South Korean transplants have set up production.
Kobe Steel's fingerprint-resistant electro-galvanized steel sheet is an original special surface-treated steel, which has also high resistance to corrosion, and is already being used in China and Southeast Asia, mainly in electric appliances. Kobe Steel has an over 25 percent share of all electro-galvanized steel sheet that Japan's blast furnace steelmakers export to China and Southeast Asia.