Brazil’s steel distributors bought heavy plates with thickness over 10mm from China has reached 15,271 tons in January that made up 84 percent of the total imported plate quantities at 18,175 tons.

The import volume from China was increased sharply compared to 600 tons only in the whole year of 2006.

The main reason was many mills export huge volumes of plate to other countries and this made the shortage of this product in Brazilian domestic market.

The total plate imports from all over the world was at 23, 060 tons in 2006.