China: Spot Iron Ore Market continues to be Sluggish

Seaborne market dropped by USD 1/MT, depicting the ongoing sluggish trend and offered Fe 63.5 at USD 120/MT CFR China.

Stock piled due to long New Year holidays in ports are hampering the Seaborne Iron ore market. By witnessing sluggishness of the market, Steel mills in China are waiting for the prices to be stable. This “wait & watch” behavior of mills have made traders to sale their spot ore on discount.

Fe 61.5 PB fines fall by USD 1/MT to about USD 119/MT CFR China. Spot are offered at RMB 830/WMT; fall by RMB 10/WMT at Qingdao Port. Square billet are offered at RMB 2,790/MT (EXW; VAT included) in Tangshan. (USD 1 = RMB 6.1078)

A source (trader) said, “Initially, we were trying to sell some material before the Lunar New Year holidays, but the continuous weak market has made it adverse to do so. Even now, it’s tough to find willing buyers to take the cargoes as they are either hesitating or giving us extremely low bids.”

Global Iron Ore prices (in USD/MT) as on date 12 Feb,2014

India

Bid submission for Goa e-auction has closed today which was extended from 29 Jan to 12 Feb, 2014 by DMG. 

Exports

Today a vessel named Medi Lausanne is being loaded at Vizag port by MMTC for 70,000 MT of Iron ore.