Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with Fe content of 63.5 percent and higher) have edged down by $2/mt during the past week to $44-46/mt CFR China, amid the negative outlook for steel prices and with virtually no transactions concluded during the week, traders said on Friday, November 20.
“There is a lot of talk of offers breaching the $40/mt mark due to dismal news regarding finished steel prices in China,” an Odisha-based miner-exporter said.
“There have been no buyers in the market. A few offers from aggregating traders did not even receive a response and there have not been any reports of transactions in the market,” the miner-exporter said.
“The market expects prices to fall further by $2-3/mt considering that there is a lot of unwinding of position in the futures market,” he added.
Some market sources indicated that traders representing Chinese steel mills said that the latter are sharply reducing their raw material inventories in view of falling steel prices and are unlikely to restock and instead will make do with port stocks.