Chinese steel giant Baosteel will begin shipping panels for shipbuilding to Korea for the first time, China Business News reports. Hyundai Heavy Industries revealed yesterday that it had signed an agreement with Baosteel to import the steel plates for shipbuilding. According to Baosteel, this is the first time a Korean shipbuilder has ordered such plates in large quantities from a Chinese producer. Baosteel began producing the plates not too long ago, becoming the first domestic steel company to do so. It currently has capacity to produce 1.4 million tons of 5-meter class steel plates. Previously, domestic demand for the plates had to be satisfied by imports from Korea or Japan.Neither party would reveal the value of the agreement, but Hyundai said that the price was lower than that of Japanese suppliers. For this reason, Korean media has speculated that other Korean companies will begin to import from China in the near future. Japanese mills are unconcerned; since the supply situation for shipbuilding steel in Asia is relatively tight right now, they feel no pressure to lower prices.According to industry professionals, very few domestic steel producers are willing to manufacture steel for shipbuilding, since not only are quality requirements much higher than for auto steel, companies must also undergo additional inspections. Nevertheless, there is a necessity, since the Chinese shipbuilding industry has doubled in size over the past two years, and imported steel is quite a bit more expensive than domestic product. The price of shipbuilding steel has remained relatively stable despite declines throughout the rest of the sector, so additional producers may be enticed by the potential for profit.Link: http://news.hexun.com/detail.aspx?lm=1715&id=1514189