European steel body European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries (EUROFER) has announced that it will ask EU competition regulators as soon as possible to investigate if the world's leading iron ore producers' efforts to escalate ore prices are abusive or not.
Press reports say that the institution will ask the EU authorities to investigate the positions of Vale of Brazil as well as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton of Australia, which on aggregate account for 70 percent of the international iron ore market.
Gordon Moffat, EUROFER director general, was quoted as saying that EUROFER will call for an investigation before March ends on ‘unjustified' price increase demands, which are not anchored by any "fundamentals" and not justified by the European steelmakers.
It is reported that EUROFER aims to ask for a separate investigation for largest producer Vale for abuse of its dominant position and another one for the iron ore market in general.
As SteelOrbis previously reported, on March 11 EUROFER released a statement expressing the European steel industry's outrage at the announcement by the iron ore industry that it will massively increase iron ore prices by 80 to 90 percent compared to actual price levels for fines and by even more for lumps and pellets.
In its statement, EUROFER called on European governments to be aware of the implications for the wider economy if these price increases become a reality. The Confederation also emphasized that these price hikes are coming from companies which even in the worst crisis in the world economy in the last 80 years have shown EBIT margins of up to 50 percent per ton.