Japan's Kobe Steel will cancel a plan to build an aluminium products plant in China amid uncertainties over sales outlook to its major customers, such as Japanese automakers, after a territorial row between Beijing and Tokyo, the Nikkei business daily said on Tuesday. A company spokesman declined to comment on the report, but added it was planning to issue a press release later in the day.

In December 2011, Kobe Steel said it would set up a joint venture company with China's Jiangsu Alcha Aluminium and they would invest about 40 billion yen ($470 million) in the venture. The joint venture was slated to build an aluminium products company that would have annual production of about 200,000 tonnes of products, such as auto parts and drinking cans in Mongolia. Kobe Steel had planned to take an 80 percent stake in the joint venture and Jiangsu would take 20 percent.

Copyright Reuters, 2012