Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with Fe content of 63.5 percent and higher) have continued to surge for the third consecutive week, breaching the $100/mt mark after rising by $4.9/mt during the past week to $101.35/mt CFR China, supported by sustained high-volume buying and by the sharp upturn in the futures market, traders said on Friday, May 24.
“Sustained buying and the sharp rise in average contract volumes have pushed up offers to a five-year high. Even signs of a mid-week correction pushing offers a shade below the $100/mt mark did not hold for more than a single trading day, indicating that buyers are expecting the bull run to be sustained,” an Odisha-based miner-exporter said.
“The significant development has been that, even after the easing of global supplies of low-alumina iron ore fines, demand for high-alumina Indian iron ore fines continues to be extremely strong,” the miner-exporter added.
According to market sources, aggregating traders in the eastern region have low stocks available at port stockyards and there have been several reports of high-volume inquiries failing to be converted into contracts and this has further fuelled the uptrend in local offers.
The sources have estimated that stockyard volumes available at Odisha-based aggregating traders do not exceed 1 million mt and hence it is currently a complete sellers’ market, leading to the surge in offer levels.
Two traders in the eastern region said that, according to reports received from their buyers, there has been a fall in Chinese port stocks and hence traders representing Chinese steel mill have been placing inquiries for far higher average volumes as Chinese steel mills have been increasing their blast furnace capacity utilization.