Daily consumption of imported iron ore sintering fines at China’s 64 steelworks under Mysteel’s survey declined to a 15-month low of 530,600 tonnes/day in total over May 7-19, or down 30,000 t/d or 5.4% from that over April 22-May 6, and their in-plant stocks edged up over the period, mainly due to less consumption by mills in Tangshan, North China’s Hebei.
Other than the ongoing steel capacity curtailing among the 23 mills in Tangshan, the Tangshan government also ordered sintering facilities halts over among its local mills over May 12-14 and May 18-22 respectively due to poor air quality, and the daily use of imported sintering fines among the sampled mills in Tangshan, thus, fell to a 19-month low of 101,300 t/d in total on May 19, or down 20.2% or 25,700 t/d from May 6, Mysteel’s survey showed.
Utilization of imported sintering fines eased too over a fortnight among the steel mills in North China’s Shanxi, as two local sintering plants had been offline for maintenance over May 18-19, a survey conductor added.
“Tangshan mills have also been reducing iron ore stocks at their works with the ongoing curbing as well as emergency halts now and then,” she said, adding that persistently high imported iron ore prices had further chilled any replenishment enthusiasm among the Tangshan mills.
Mysteel SEADEX 62% Australian Fines, for example, had been hovering at above $200/dmt CFR Qingdao over May 7-19, and it touched its record high of $233.7/dmt CFR Qingdao on May 12 ever since Mysteel commenced the price assessment on January 4 2010.
In contrast, pellet feeds including domestic and imported cargoes into the blast furnaces of the 64 mills had increased by 0.45 percentage point from May 6 to 16.62% as of May 19, a three-month high, as Chinese steel producers had been chasing higher productivity when steel margins were high.
During the latest survey period, imported iron ore fines inventories at these 64 mills, therefore, grew by 102,700 tonnes or 0.6% in two weeks to 17 million tonnes as of May 19, as those mills along the Yangtze river had received concentrated deliveries of imported iron ore, which had more than offset the lower stocks at the Tangshan steel mills, Mysteel’s detailed breakdowns showed.
Written by Lea Li, liye@mysteel.com
This article has been published under an article exchange agreement between Mysteel Global and SteelMint.
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