JFE Meranti is a newcomer to the coated steel coil sector, and it expects its first years to be challenging while it works to achieve the lion's share of Myanmar's up-and-coming market for coated steel products, chief executive and managing director Sebastian Langendorf has told Fastmarkets.
Langendorf was speaking in an exclusive interview at JFE Meranti's Singapore headquarters in the Marina Bay Financial Center on March 1."The Myanmar coated steel market has tremendous potential," he said."In the short term, it will be a challenging environment because it is such a young economy. But we expect there to be significant opportunities eventually, because Myanmar is a frontier country with a good domestic base for our key target segments in the building and construction industries," he added.This is also the right time for JFE Meranti to enter the coated steel business in Myanmar, with steelmakers in Southeast Asia set to experience a boom time in light of the continuous restructuring in the Chinese steel market, he said."Given that the Chinese steel market will continue to restructure in the long term, capacity consolidation will continue, and exports will continue to be restricted," he said. "In light of this, there...