By Daiki Kawasaki / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
Nippon Steel Corp. will invest heavily abroad, including countries where growth is expected, such as the United States and India, according to the steelmaker's five-year business plan starting from fiscal 2026, which ends in March 2027.
On the other hand, the company plans to maintain its production capacity in Japan, where demand for steel is stagnating. The company instead aims to improve profitability by stimulating domestic demand in various sectors such as the automotive, construction and energy industries.
The Japanese steelmaker will invest about 6 trillion yen in facilities and projects in Japan and abroad by fiscal 2030, according to the business plan.
"We will reclaim the status of the World's No. 1 steelmaker by improving profitability in Japan and implementing a growth strategy abroad," said Nippon Steel President Tadashi Imai at a press conference to announce the business plan on Friday.
Nippon Steel has placed the 6-trillion-yen investment plan as the cornerstone of its business plan. The steelmaker plans to allocate about 4 trillion yen overseas, including a plan to invest 11 billion dollar (about 1.7 trillion yen) in its subsidiary United States Steel Corp. by 2028, which was announced in November.
The Japanese steelmaker plans to construct a new steel mill in India, a country that Nippon Steel highly prioritizes, along with the United States. The steelmaker will transfer its technology and know-how as much as possible not only to the two countries but to Europe and Thailand, as well. It plans to strengthen its capabilities to meet a wide range of demand, from high-grade steels for automotives and other products to steel products for a wide range of uses.
Meanwhile, Nippon Steel will invest about 2 trillion yen in Japan. The steelmaker aims to increase the supply of high-grade steels, which the company excels at. To seize domestic demand, Nippon Steel plans to involve clients in product development from an early stage, proposing suitable steel products across diverse sectors such as the automotive field.
The steelmaker will step up its efforts to invest in electric furnaces, which emit less carbon dioxide compared to blast furnaces, as part of the company's decarbonization efforts. It has already unveiled a plan to introduce three electric furnaces at a steel mill in western Japan in fiscal 2028-2029.
Nippon Steel is also working on developing hydrogen-based steelmaking technology, but the company said that full-scale introduction of the technology is expected to be in around 2040. High costs have been a challenge for utilizing hydrogen in steelmaking.
Nippon Steel plans to maintain its level of domestic crude steel production capacity at 44 million tons per year. The steelmaker has been working on optimizing its production structure to respond to shrinking domestic demand, including a shutdown of a blast furnace in Kashima, Ibaraki Prefecture, in March. The company did not include further plans to shut down blast furnaces in the business plan.
"We have shut down blast furnaces ahead of other companies in the industry," Imai said. "We have sufficiently achieved the goal of improving the competitiveness of our domestic production facilities."
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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.
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December 15, 2025 04:24 ET (09:24 GMT)
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