Taiwan’s electricity prices will be raised by 17% for industrial users using high- and ultra-high-voltage from April 1. Wire rod market participants said the processing of wire rods is mainly wire drawing, spheroidizing, and pickling, which use a huge amount of power.

Wire rod processing factories complained the high power costs can’t be passed on to buyers as the current market hasn’t yet recovered with very few orders, so they may have to absorb the cost themselves before the demand gets better.

Personnel costs and commodity prices have been rising in recent years, coupled with the sharply rising electricity costs, the cost of drawing wire was expected to rise further in the future.