JFE Steel Corp. plans to construct a blast furnace in China in a joint project with a local company to build an integrated steelworks that could exceed 100 billion yen in value, company sources said Wednesday.
JFE Steel, part of JFE Holdings Inc. and the world's fourth-largest crude steel producer in 2003, will construct an integrated steelworks with the state-owned Guangzhou Iron & Steel Enterprises Group, the sources said.
The project, the first overseas blast furnace to be built by a Japanese steelmaker since World War II, will supply steel sheet to Japanese automakers that have begun production in China amid the rapidly increasing demand there for automobiles, they said.