Major flat mills are fully booked through April

Major flat mills are fully booked through April

All three main flat rolled Brazilian mills are sold out through April 2003, due to large commitments of exports into China. There are only a few parcels of hot dipped galvanised available as all spare cold rolled coil and hot rolled coil tonnages are going to China, where Brazil is considered an emerging country and can therefore sell at least 3% of total imports duty free. A recent report in Brazil points out the need to increase the crude production capacity if Brazil wants to meet the demand from both the international and the domestic markets. Since 1994, Brazil made investments of more than $10 billion with this regard, increasing productivity by more than 60%, however crude steel capacity has only increased only by 3.7%. Currently, there are projects to add a third blast furnace to CST and a second blast furnace to Acominas.