The 65-17 grade Silico Manganese price North China refreshed its 31-month low as of November 8, hitting Yuan 5,950/MT (USD847.8/MT) Ex-works and including the 13% VAT after having dropped another Yuan 200/MT on week, according to Mysteel’s latest weekly survey, as the country is still flooded with oversupply of Silico Manganese and Manganese ore supplies have been more than abundant.
“Many new Silico Manganese smelters have been commissioned this year, and price slumps amid more production,” an official from a steel mill in Hebei, North China said, noting that the ferroalloy price has declined so much from last year, when around the same time the 65-17 grade Silico Manganese in North China was Yuan 2,900/MT or 32.8% higher than now.
A market source from Shanghai agreed, also noting that new Ferro-alloys smelters had emerged one after another over the fourth quarter of 2018 until the third quarter of this year mainly because of higher prices until last year and ease of investing in Ferro-alloys plants in China.
To slow the pace of price declines, some Chinese ferroalloy smelters have started conducting maintenance on their facilities to clear some stocks on hand, he said, and many also planned for output cuts in late November.
Mysteel’s survey on the 121 Silico Manganese smelters showed that their Silico Manganese output hit a 70-month high in October, up 6.4% or 58,849 MT on the month to 985,098 tonnes. The 121 smelters represent almost all the country’s Silico Manganese capacity.
At the same time, abundance in manganese ore supply in China lend little support to the Ferro-alloy price, the Hebei official added.
“I heard that Manganese ore at the Chinese ports has accumulated to a high level, which has made the raw material more affordable,” he said.
As of November 8, manganese ore stocks at six major ports across China under Mysteel’s survey reached a new high of 4.6 million tonnes ever since Mysteel launched the survey in November 2011, or up 58,000 tonnes or 1.3% on the week, according to the database.
(This article has been published under the article exchange agreement between SteelMint Research and Mysteel Global.)
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