Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with Fe content of 63.5 percent and higher) have remained stable during the past week at $90.30/mt CFR China amid low market activity as buyers have been reluctant to conclude any large transactions, anticipating that offers will weaken further, traders said on Friday, March 3.
“For most days in the past week, offer levels moved within a very narrow range of $1/mt and then closed the week unchanged. The optimism in the market has been fast fading ever since the higher levels of $95/mt in the previous week collapsed,” an Odisha-based miner-exporter said.
“So buyers and sellers are mostly ,in wait-and-watch mode,” the miner-exporter added.
According to two other traders, buyers are telling them that Chinese steel mills are in no rush to re-stock and are willing to wait to see if offers dipp further before taking a decision, and this has caused volumes and the number of transaction to fall during the past week.