Australian miner Fortescue Metals Group has announced that it has opened its new office in Shanghai, China. Speaking at the opening, Fortescue CEO Elizabeth Gaines said she expected China to produce around 1 billion mt of steel in 2019, with Chinese data showing seven percent output growth for the first 11 months of last year, according to a Reuters report.
“We’ve yet to see official numbers for (all of) 2019, I would expect more modest growth in 2020,” said Gaines, quoted by Reuters. She added that the ongoing trend of urbanization remains very steel intensive, indicating that more high-speed rail investments and airport constructions will create steel demand.
Fortescue set up a Chinese trading entity in April last year to focus on smaller lot size transactions denominated in the Chinese currency. Gaines said that they “expect to see about five percent of [Fortescue] China sales being transacted by this channel”, adding that she expects strong demand for higher grade concentrate going forward.
