Indian export offers for high grade iron ore fines (with Fe content of 63.5 percent and higher) have moved up by $3.20/mt during the past week breaching the $90/mt mark to $91.75/mt CFR China amid renewed fears of supply tightness, traders said on Friday, May 10.
Market sources said that hopes of an easing of supply tightness have proved to be short-lived with fresh reports of supply disruptions from Vale’s mines in Brazil.
While prospects of Brazilian supplies falling in the global market trigger hectic buying in the physical market, reports in the local Indian market that aggregating traders have been severely impacted by the recent cyclone in Odisha and have been unable to access their stockyards provided a boost for offers to breach the $90/mt mark, the sources said.
“With Odisha port operations limping back, there is considerable concern that reconstruction of infrastructure, roads and electricity supplies will take longer than anticipated and a number of aggregating traders are not able to access their stocks,” an Odisha-based miner-exporter said.
”Even a number of miners distant from the coast have been facing problems relating to evacuation of stocks from pitheads as transportation by truckers has been impeded. As a result, there has been a significant fall in stocks available on offer and lower volumes have added fuel to the current uptrend,” the miner-exporter added.