Announcing, then withdrawing, a coal surcharge — and switching to a ¥3,000-a-tonne increase (2022)

What the withdrawn scheme revealed

The proposal that says most is the one pulled after two months. Pass through 90% of the coal price above $200 a tonne automatically, and revise the price every two months — what Taiheiyo Cement put forward first was a scheme to replace negotiation itself with a mechanism. It was withdrawn on a single objection from ready-mixed concrete makers, that a price changing every two months would not do for them, and what came out instead was ¥3,000 a tonne fixed for a year: a price arrived at as the result of negotiation. Even a company holding about 39% of the domestic market, it can be said, could not move its customers’ trading customs.

Still, profitability returning is not the same as price-setting having changed. The procurement price of imported coal kept falling — $340, then $210, then $150 — and the narrowing of the operating loss coincides with that tailwind. Sales volumes have kept sliding, from 13.13 million tonnes to 12.95 million and then 12.33 million, so the relationship in which volume falls by as much as price is passed through remains intact. Whether the 10%-plus operating margin set out in the fiscal 2026 medium-term plan is reached depends on whether the same price can be held when coal rises again.