Steelmaker JFE seeks product price hike of $230/T amid soaring material costs

TOKYO :Japan's No.2 steelmaker, JFE Holdings Inc, is seeking to raise product prices by 30,000 yen ($230) a tonne in the April-June quarter or next to reflect soaring costs of raw materials and shipping charges, a top executive said on Friday.

"We are in talks with our customers, seeking to bolster product prices by 20,000 yen a tonne to reflect higher raw material costs and by another 10,000 yen a tonne to pass on other rising expenses such as ferroalloy and shipping,"

Masashi Terahata, JFE's executive vice president, told a news conference.

JFE reported a net profit of 288.1 billion yen ($2.2 billion) for the year ended March 31, against a loss of 21.9 billion yen a year earlier, as higher steel product prices more than offset soaring prices of steel-making ingredients such as coking coal.

As concerns increased over supply shortages from leading producer Russia on top of already-tight global supply, coking coal prices have soared 140 per cent by the end of March from a year earlier.