“Shipbuilding industry may impact steel”

Seoul - Korea’s shipbuilding industry crisis may spread to the steel industry and there needs to be a plan to be deal with this, said Atsushi Yamaguchi, a senior analyst at UBS Securities in Japan, in an interview with the JoongAng Ilbo.

Yamaguchi is a leading analyst of the Japanese steel industry and has been a member of a panel of experts who advise the government on the steel industry’s restructuring issues. “Korean steelmakers such as Posco and Hyundai Steel have lots of strengths, since they were built after learning from both the good and bad that Japanese steelmakers went through in the past,” said Yamaguchi during the interview, which took place in USB Securities’ headquarters in Tokyo. “But they might run into trouble even though they performed very well up until now.” According to Yamaguchi, Korean steelmakers are facing a crisis due to the change in steel consumption per capita. Theoretically, as a country becomes more developed, the average consumption of steel products per person goes up. Steel industry insiders, however, believe that in developed countries the maximum amount per person is around 800 kilograms (1,763 pounds) a year. Korea already has long surpassed that level and recorded 1,061 kilograms as of 2014.

According to the World Steel Association, the international trade body for the iron and steel industry, Korea is the only country with more than 1,000 kilograms of consumption per person among the 132 states the association surveys.

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