Indian export offer prices for iron ore fines (with 58 percent iron content) remained unchanged at $55/mt FOB Vishakhapatnam port and export offer prices for iron ore fines (with 53 percent and above iron content) at $118/mt FOB Paradip port, but transaction volumes were very low owing to availability problems for required volumes, traders said on Thursday, October 25.
"There were higher number of offers with Chinese mills reported to be re-stocking. But offer prices remained unchanged and transactions concluded for very small volumes since traders were facing problems of aggregating tonnages from private miners," a trader in eastern Indian province of Orissa said.
"Every mine was facing investigations into illegal mining and productions have become uncertain. The provincial government too has imposed a lot of restrictions on transportation of ore from pitheads to port," the trader said.
"India has moved from top of list of iron ore supplier to China to the bottom. Chinese traders were extremely wary of sourcing from India since lot of offers were not being converted into firm transactions," said a Kolkata trader.