[ferro-alloys.com]Stocks of hot-rolled, cold-rolled and coated coils held by Japanese steelmakers, distributors and coil centers were down 3% month on month at 4.27 million mt at the end of October, data released Monday by Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp showed. A NSSMC spokeswoman Tuesday attributed the decline to the continuing increase in deliveries after a typhoon and hurricane disrupted distribution in Japan in September. "Deliveries in November were heard smoother and the demand for flat products has been firm; we expect stocks at end November to be even lower," she said. Of the end October total, stocks held by producers were down 3.3% on month at 2.02 million mt, by coil centers down 0.3% at 1.41 million mt and by distributors down 6.6% on month at 836,000 mt. By product, stocks of HRC were down 4.8% on month at 2.11 million mt at end October and of coated coils down 3% at 1.34 million mt, while CRC stocks rose 2% over the same period to 809,000 mt. A Tokyo-based sheet trader said the supply-demand balance for sheet products tightened in October, partly due to an outage at JFE Steel's Kurashiki blast furnace. JFE Steel temporary banked its No 2 blast furnace in the Kurashiki section of its West Japan works October 23 and aims to return to pre-banking production levels by end December, S&P Global Platts reported earlier, adding the steelmaker expects to lose 400,000 mt of crude steel output as a result of the stoppage.

(S&P Global Platts)

• [Editor:王可]