Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp. will build a steel plant on the outskirts of Jakarta, Indonesia to manufacture automotive-use steel sheet, under an agreement with the Indonesian state-owned company Krakatau Steel.

The pair will invest about 30 billion JPY for the plant with an annual output capacity of 400,000 tonnes of product. It is to become operational in 2016, according to Nippon Steel.

The project, fifth of its kind in Asia invested by Nippon Steel, aims to meet the increasing demand of manufacturing automobiles in Indonesia.
Nippon Steel said its capacity of producing automotive-use steel sheet in Asia is estimated to around 5 million tonnes a year, and the group plans to raise its capacity in domestic factories by 60 percent in the coming time.

At the same time, another Japanese steel producer -JFE Steel- also intends to invest 3 billion JPY in building its plant in Indonesia.

Earlier, Posco from the Republic of Korea operated its factory in the Southeast Asian nation from late 2013. -VNA