South Korea exported 162,093 mt of tinplate in the first half of this year, a drop of 5.5 percent from 171,509 mt in the same period last year.
The international market prices for tinplate have continued to be on the decrease since the fourth quarter of last year without showing any positive signs of a recovery, and a consequent drop in South Korean tinplate makers' profitability caused a strong shrinkage of their overseas sales in the January-June period.
In the first half of the year, South Korean producers suffered a steep fall of 23.5 percent from a year ago in the exports of their tinplate to Indonesia, which had led the expansion of their overall overseas sales in the same period last year, but enjoyed a whopping year-on-year jump of 219.5 percent to 23,502 mt in their tinplate shipments bound for Italy.
Since the international market prices for tinplate are staying in a range of $1,100-1,200/mt, South Korean tinplate producers, who are heavily dependent on the overseas market rather than domestic market for their sales, are hardly enlarging their exports due to the low profitability in sales.
An increase in the inflow of Chinese products is a source of worry to South Korean producers of tinplate in the domestic market. In the first half of this year, imports of tinplate in South Korea totaled 6,215 mt, almost marking a threefold increase from the year-earlier period's 2,288 mt in the wake of a high rise in the prices for domestic products. Particularly, imports of Chinese tinplate skyrocketed 151.1 percent to 3,154 mt in the first half of this year, compared with 1,256 mt in the same period last year.
Meanwhile, the price for domestic tinplate, which had increased by KRW 250,000/mt year on year last year, is continuing its high flying at a level which has increased by as much as KWR 200,000/mt ($185/mt) from a year ago, and there is a high possibility that the price may go up further in the future. The current domestic price for tinplate in South Korea stands at KRW 1,770,500/mt ($1,638/mt).