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On July 1, China's prices of imported iron ore for both port inventories and seaborne cargoes continued to trend downward, with trading being relatively flat.
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On July 1, the most-traded iron ore contract for September delivery on the Dalian Commodity Exchange slumped further, closing the daytime session at Yuan 747.5/dmt ($111.6/dmt), down notably by Yuan 55/dmt or 6.9% from the settlement price on June 30.
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As of June 30, among 247 steelmakers nationwide, blast furnace (BF) capability utilization rate registered at 87.61%, 1.37 percentage points lower on week. The operating rate among these steel plants reached 80.79%, 1.13 percentage points lower on week. The daily molten iron output among the mills also decreased by 36,900 tonnes/day over the period to 2.36 million t/d.
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As of June 30, 55 of the 126 blast furnaces in Tangshan region, North China's Hebei province, under Mysteel's weekly survey are either undergoing maintenance (excluding long-term production halts) or being idled.
Blast furnaces totaling 38,510 cu m, thus, are not producing during the survey period, and the capacity utilization rate among the total is at
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According to Mysteel's survey covering China's 45 major ports, the continuous declines in portside inventories of imported iron ore finally ended over June 24-30 after a 13-week losing streak starting from April 1, with the volume recovering to 126.3 million tonnes, albeit up by a modest 539,300 tonnes or 0.4% on week. Market participants believe that the easing daily discharge, despite the lower new ore arrivals, was the main driver behind the reverse-up in portside inventories.
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Over June 24-30, the blast furnace capacity utilization rate among China's 247 steel mills had dipped for the second week by another 1.37 percentage points on week to 87.61%, indicating that some of the surveyed mills continued to trim production in response to their persistently thinned steel margins or even losses.
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Note: To better reflect China's domestic iron ore mining companies' performance, Mysteel has decided to enrich the content sharing for this particular survey starting January 18 2019, and the sample size has been enlarged to 126 and 186 independent iron ore mining companies for different segments from the original 70
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Crude steel production may drop by 10-15% in July. Supply-demand imbalance to be restored. Prices look weak in July, August may see some uptick in demand.
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Iron Ore Port Stocks:
The total iron ore stocks at 45 major ports in China added up to 126.3 million tonnes on week as of June 30, up 539,300 tonnes on week. Among the total, 5.5 million tonnes were pellets, up 161,200 tonnes on week, 8.1 million tonnes being concentrates, up 414,400 tonnes on week, 16.5 million tonnes being lumps, up 359,200 tonnes
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China's prices of imported iron ore for both port inventories and seaborne cargoes dipped further on June 30, with ore buying from steelmakers remaining flat.