Monday, September 13,
Iron ore prices in China have shown a sharp downward trend in past 2-3 days, 63.5/63 Fe cargo being traded at $143-144/MT with low volumes and weak buying interest in the market. “Markets have been weak for past few days, there are very few queries from China, said one of the exporter based in Eastern India”
Prices have gone down by $4/MT. Steelmakers in Wuan City, Hebei Province received a notice on September 4 that blast furnaces and rolling production lines of 18 steelmakers were required to be shut down before September 5 lasting for 20 to 30 days. Furthermore, other coking and iron mining factories were also required to stop production with power restriction.
Tangshan in Hebei Province, another iron & steel producing base which accounts for 10% of national production capacity will also start to cut production of high consumers in the industry. It is said that Tangshan’s local Government announced that 30 iron and steel enterprises and 26 coking and chemical companies should take production cutback during September to December. After that, the average monthly output of iron and steel will be down 46.5% compared with the average level of the previous 8 months. In this year, the average coke output will be down 40%.
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