Nippon Steel to Beef Up Ties With Brazil’s Usiminas: Pres.

Tokyo, Jan. 10 (Jiji Press)–Nippon Steel Corp. President Akio Mimura said Wednesday that the company plans to provide advanced technologies to its Brazilian partner Usiminas, in order to reinforce their tie-up and compete better with global leader Arcelor Mittal of Luxembourg.

Nippon Steel has been accelerating its efforts to expand international tie-ups, as the company, the world’s second largest, lags far behind Arcelor Mittal in scale. The Luxembourg firm’s annual crude steel production, for example, totals about 110 million tons, or more than three times that of Nippon Steel.

Partly to protect itself against any takeover steps, Nippon Steel last year strengthened its capital and business ties with South Korean steelmaker Posco, and made Usiminas, formally Usinas Siderurgicas Minas Gerais SA, an affiliate.

Mimura said that Nippon Steel will fully support Usiminas by providing production technologies for such items as steel sheets for oil and gas pipelines, especially because the two firms have few overlapping markets.

The company will also beef up the scope of its business tie-ups with Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. and Kobe Steel Ltd. , to compete with Arcelor Mittal, Mimura said.

Meanwhile, Mimura indicated he wants to conclude by this autumn a review of Nippon Steel’s comprehensive partnership that was originally formed with Arcelor before the company’s merger with Mittal and has been inherited by the merged entity.

As part of the comprehensive partnership, Nippon Steel operates a steelmaking joint venture with the global leader’s Arcelor division and China’s Shanghai Baosteel Group. In the United States, the company is engaged in joint production with its competitor’s Mittal division.END

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