New joint venture established in Wakayama
Japan's one of the largest steel producers Sumitomo Metals Industries Ltd. (SMI) announced that it has branched off its Wakayama Steel Work's upstream mills to launch Sumikin Iron and Steel Corporation on November 1 in consequence of the joint venture agreement signed among SMI, Taiwan's China Steel Corp. (CSC) and Sumitomo Corporation (SC) on May 14. Accordingly, the East Asia United Steel Corporation (EAU) established in July and funded 62% by SMI, 33% by CSC and 5% by SC will be the holding company of Sumikin. EAU will increase its capital still within this week and entire shares of Sumikin will be transferred by SMI to EAU on November 11. Via such stock transfer, the establishment of this international joint venture will be completed. The new company called Sumikin Iron and Steel Corporation, becoming active as of November 1, 2003, will mainly produce and sell steel products including billets and slabs, will employ a total of 920 workers and will be 100% owned by EAU. Acording to the announcement by SMI, Sumitomo Corporation will be the exclusive agent of Sumikin to sell slabs to CSC group. It is estimated that CSC will purchase approximately 1.8 million tons of slabs from Sumikin from April 2005. Sumikin will also supply slabs and billets to SMI. Please click to refer to previous article published by SteelOrbis Sumitomo and China Steel to expand jv