Kobe Steel copper product plant loses remaining industrial quality badge

The Kobe Steel plant at the centre of a data-falsification scandal that has shaken supply chains around the world has been stripped of all its industrial quality certifications, the Japanese government said on Wednesday.

In another blow to the embattled steelmaker, the government-sanctioned seal on insulated copper tubing from Kobe's Hatano plant, one of its main copper product plants, was revoked after an investigation by a certification firm into its quality controls, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said in a statement.

The plant southwest of Tokyo has also lost its ISO 9001 quality certification from the International Standards Organization (ISO), Japan Quality Assurance Organization said.

Earlier, the plant was stripped of its Japan Industrial Standards (JIS) seal for seamless copper pipe products used for air conditioning and refrigerators, as part of the fallout of one of Japan's biggest industrial scandals.

Having the quality seals revoked means the company can no longer sell the products with the JIS label, potentially restricting the number of customers that want to buy them and reducing its sales.

"We aim to regain the JIS certification and recover trust from our customers as soon as possible by implementing measures to prevent future misconduct," Kobe Steel said in a statement.
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Kobe Steel faces investors' ire after data fabrication scandal surfaces

Investors looked set to bail out of Kobe Steel Ltd on Tuesday, after Japan's third-biggest steelmaker revealed it had fabricated data to show its products met customer specifications in the latest scandal to rock corporate Japan.

Kobe Steel said on Sunday that about 4 per cent of the aluminium and copper products that it shipped from September 2016 to August 2017 were falsely labelled as meeting the specifications requested by customers.

The misconduct involved dozens of staff and possibly stretched back 10 years, the company said.

The admission from the steel and aluminium maker follows similar scandals at Japanese companies including Nissan Motor, Mitsubishi Motors and Takata Corp. Toshiba Corp is still battling the fallout of a scandal involving reporting inflated profits.

"The impact on financials is unclear, but could be substantial depending on request(s) for replacement/recall," Jeffries analyst Thanh Ha Pham said in a note. "Handling the situation is key to avoid long-term reputation damage."
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