Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with Fe content of 63.5 percent and higher) have moved within a narrow range during the past week, edging up a marginal $0.3/mt to $72.15/mt CFR China with buyers cautious over the uncertain short-term trend, traders said on Friday, January 11.
“Buyers have been steadily reducing contract volumes over the past weeks and even the number of trades has declined,” an Odisha-based trader said.
“We learn from our buyers that most Chinese steel mills prefer to source from port stocks and hence are not willing to restock through physical overseas contracts,” the trader added.
Market sources said that most of even the limited trades for small volumes were accounted for by aggregating traders and Indian miner-exporters have been unable to conclude contracts for significant volumes in the absence of buyers and small-volume trades are unviable for such miner-exporters.
The sources said that the inherent weakness in the market is evident from that fact that even market speculation that offers would breach the $75/mt mark have proved to be short-lived and offers started showing losses towards the close of the week as key drivers were clearly in the negative zone.
According to an Odisha-based trader, buyers are waiting for a correction to gain momentum and for offers settle below the $70/mt mark before making any large transactions.