Stainless steel arrivals at Shanghai reversed their traditional upward trend and decreased in the first 11 months of this year, due largely to lukewarm demand at home.

Local customs sources said that between January and November, Shanghai imported 388,000 tons of stainless steel, a year-on-year decrease of 20.6 percent.

Industry analysts ascribed the decline to a substantial expansion of China's production capacity of stainless steel and an ensuing cooldown in demand for imports.

In the first half of this year, China used 2.09 million tons of stainless steel products, a small increase of 0.7 percent over the same period of last year.

Analysts warned of a likely oversupply of stainless steels in 2007, when the country will be able to produce more than 3.5 million tons of cold-rolled steel products and 5.5 million tons of hot-rolled steel products every year.

Source: Xinhua