Indian iron ore export offers show slight weakness amid low volumes

Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (Fe content of 63 percent and above) have showed a slight softening during the past week amid low volumes and very few transactions, traders said on Friday.
 
"There was a marginal weakness of $1-2/mt in export offers at $149/mt CFR China. But no transaction for any significant volumes have been reported from the market," an Orissa-based trader said.
 
"There was a marked slowdown in inquiries by representatives of Chinese steel mills. Indian miners-exporters expected this in line with the lull before the Chinese New Year while some felt that restocking by Chinese mills would not be aggressive since rebar prices in that market were softening," the trader said.
 
Market sources said that, with Chinese construction grade steel prices edging down, interest in Indian ore will remain low, besides the fact that most Chinese mills have not been acquiring their required volumes from the Indian market.
 
Under these circumstances, traders and exporting miners are not hopeful of prices bouncing back to levels of $158-159/mt CFR China, which were seen earlier this month. Even the current export offers are not considered by buyers to be sustainable and so short-term fines export offers are thought to have a downside potential of $5-10/mt, the sources said.