For many years, Mitsui& Co., Ltd. (Mitsui) has held the position as the top-ranking genera trading company providing support services for Japan’s world leading steel industry. These services include the domestic distribution and export of steel, such as steel products, semi-finished items and processed products. Moreover, through its global network of offices, Mitsui has created offshore trade flows and responded to the steel distribution and logistics needs of customers both at home and abroad.
Mitsui has also created, through its 30 associated companies in Japan and 31 related companies overseas, steel product related regional trade flows in response to the requirements of local business interests as well as customers and has been broadening its earnings base out of its investments in local enterprises.
Since April 2004 Mitsui established the Business Promotional Division, which specializes in steel related enterprises. This division swiftly responds to the needs for joint investment with steel users and manufacturers in Japan and overseas, with an eye on making strategic investments in new products and new growth fields.
Finished products: flat-rolled products, galvanized sheets, coated sheets, automotive steel, plates, pipes, tubular products, beams, wire rods, special steels, stainless steel
Semi-finished products: slabs, billets etc.
1) Service centers for plates processors (processing/logistics)
2) Steel manufacturers (blast furnace mills etc.)
3) Trading companies specialized in steel products
Mitsui, in response to the market needs of automakers, household appliance and heavy electric machinery makers, who have shifted their production bases to the U.S., South East Asia and China, established local service centers for plate processor, coated sheet and tin plate factories.
Underpinning Mitsui’s sophisticated SCM, fully equipped with IT systems, are outsourcing arrangements that provide customers worldwide with high-performing services that differentiate themselves from conventional logistics in the steel business.
In China, one of Mitsui’s key geographical focuses and where the steel market is rapidly expanding, Mitsui has been establishing a nationwide network of steel service centers for steel processing by partnering with China’s leading steel maker‘Shanghai Baosteel Group Corporation’.
Drawing fully on its company-wide alliance with quality global partners in the fields of machinery, automobiles and energy and also on its integrated unit synergies, involving the energy, machinery, project and finance groups, Mitsui aims to sustain a dominant position in steel distribution services by creating a new value added steel logistics network as a “multi functional SHOSHA”