Strong U.S. European Demand Boosts Taiwan’s Fastener Production Value

Benefited by the strong demand in the US and Europe as well as the stable price level and smooth supply of steel in the upstream, the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Taiwan reported on Nov. 5th that the production value of Taiwanese fastener industry in 2014 is likely to reach NT$90 billion and may touch the new peak after 2012, though the figure is still lower than the highest point in history (NT$95.3 billion in 2011). The production of Taiwanese fastener industry in 2011 reached the highest point of 1.376 million tons (at the value of NT$95.3 billion) and then continued to drop in the following 2 straight years. The production values of 2012 and 2013 were NT$85.6 billion and NT$85.1 billion respectively.

To review the export over the past few years, the YoY growth rates of export in 2010 and 2011 were as high as 59.1% and 24.2% respectively due to customers’ changing suppliers under the EU’s antidumping measure against Chinese manufacturers and the strong demand in downstream machinery and automobile markets; in 2012 the European debt crisis made great impacts on the European market, pulling down the export to drop by 5.8% annually; in 2013, as the European economy gradually recovered and U.S. economy continued to warm up, the export slightly grew 2.6% over last year; This year the global economy gradually becomes stable and the downstream industries demonstrate a significant sign of recovery. During Jan. through Sep. this year, the export reached US$3.012 billion at an annual growth rate of 10.8%.

Among the top 5 countries to which Taiwan exports fasteners, the U.S. shares 34.7% of Taiwan’s fastener export, followed by Germany at 9.6%, Netherlands, Japan, UK each at roughly 5%, and 3.0% for China in the 7th place. Except for the decline of -5.2% in export to Japan, most of the countries were in double digit growth.