Thursday, December 30,
Offers of Indian ore with 63.5 percent iron content were unchanged at $177-178/MT. Prices have remained within the same range for almost two weeks.
“Steel mills are short of money at the end of the year, so what should we expect? I don’t think any big movements will happen in the remaining two days before the new year,” said an iron ore trader in the eastern Chinese port city of Rizhao.
“It seems many steel mills are not holding high inventories, but they will come back to replenish their stocks when the credit crunch eases,” said an official in charge of iron ore at a medium-sized steel mill.
The most active rebar futures contract (SRBK1) on the Shanghai Futures Exchange reached 4,774 yuan ($721.1) per tonne at the morning close on Thursday, almost flat from the end of Wednesday.
China steel production has recovered steadily since the middle of October, when electricity supply restrictions, particularly in Hebei, reduced output to just 1.563 million tonnes a day.
But those mills are expected to ramp up output in January as power restrictions are lifted.
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