Amid increase in global iron ore prices and rise in lump premium, imported lump offers to India have increased.
Spot iron ore fines prices in China have moved up by USD 2/MT W-o-W owing to pre stocking before the Lunar New Year holidays. Spot iron lump premium has also moved up and was assessed at USD 0.0725/MT for Fe 62% on 13 Jan’16.
Following this, offers for imported lump to India have also moved up. Offers for imported South African lump to India are around USD 52/MT, CFR Kandla for Feb’16 loading. The offers were seen at around USD 48/MT, CFR Kandla last week.
“At present, there are not many suppliers of imported lump for ready stock deliveries in Kandla as the import vessel of many end users in Gujarat are already at berth”, shared a west India based market participant.
Another importer in west India shared that market has witnessed improvement in demand this week over which prices of semi finished and finished products have witnessed increment. And steel mills in Gujarat expect the improvement to continue in the coming days too.
As per sources, south India based importers have two bought two vessels of Assmang lump which are expected to arrive in Feb’16 and another iron ore import vessel has been imported by Gujarat based plants which is likely to arrive by end of Jan’16.
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