From each customer of steel tinplates in Thailand, advanced and urgent shipment of tinplates has been requested one after another against shipment of late December. The main customers which are requesting urgent delivery are the sardine canners and the battery industry like a Japanese home appliance maker.
As the tinplate mills in Japan will not be able to secure enough quantity soon, they have commenced studies to request assistance of the Japanese tinplate mills operating in Asia. As the shipping schedule of conventional vessels for Thailand has not normalized yet, shipment is likely to be done by a container vessel. And also, the unloading ports are to use those located south.
Tinplate production of the Japanese tinplate mills in Thailand are not directly affected by the Thai floods. However, packers of tinplate users were damaged, and on top of it as the Bangkok port and so on are unavailable due to damages of the floods unloading of tinplates has become hard. With this, production of and demand on tinplates has been largely sluggish in Thailand.
It is estimated that export quantity of tinplates and loams from Japan are about half from a usual case. Arrival of tinplates from China and Korea seems also to be affected by the floods. Thailand is the export country of canned fish and of these, canned sardine is for the domestic market rather than export.
Then request of urgent delivery of this time is from sardine canners. A battery is a necessary supply under unrecovered electricity in Thailand. Orders of tinplates are placed for January shipment but its quantity seems to have been required by more than 3 times against usual one.
As for rehabilitation from damages of the floods in Thailand, the Japanese automotive industry is recovering. However, it is widely thought that its recovery will go into full swing from late next quarter. Seeing demand from canned sardine and battery use devoid sizes of tinplates are considered to come out and recovery of demand is expected to go into full swing in next quarter.
(Sourced from the TEX Report)
