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JFE Steel Corporation has announced that it will expand the electrical steel sheet production capacity of its West Japan Works in Kurashiki District. The plan calls for doubling the facility’s existing capacity for producing high-grade non-oriented electrical steel sheet. Construction, which will cost approximately 49.0 billion yen, is expected to finish in time for production to start in the first half of fiscal 2024. The electrification of automobiles is accelerating amid the global push toward carbon neutrality. In response, JFE Steel has decided to expand capacity at Kurashiki to accommodate the growing demand for high-grade non-oriented electrical steel sheet products, which are essential for the production of motors that drive electric vehicles.
Electrical steel sheet, which contains additives such as silicon and aluminium, offers excellent magnetic properties such as high magnetic flux density and low iron loss. Two types of sheet are available. Non-oriented electrical steel sheet, which offers excellent magnetic properties that are nearly uniform in all directions, is used in the iron cores of motors. Grain-oriented electrical steel sheet, which exhibits superior magnetic properties in a single (rolling) direction, is used in the iron cores of power- and distribution transformers.
JFE Steel expects to continue expanding its supply capacity for high-grade non-oriented and grain-oriented electrical steel sheet in anticipation of further increases in worldwide demand as automobiles become more electric, energy use becomes more efficient, and renewable energy is adopted more widely.