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Prices for imported iron ore in China's portside and seaborne markets slid on January 22, while portside trading activity picked up slightly.
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Rebar prices in China’s futures market stayed rangebound during the January 18-22 week. Sources said Friday that weakening demand had dampened the rebar price and that in the days ahead, the trend of raw materials prices would play an important role in determining the ferrous market’s direction overall.
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Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), Japan’s largest electric power company, has asked large industrial power consumers including electric-arc furnace steel producers to decrease their power consumption, an order that could impact mini-mill production and undermine scrap prices.
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China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the country’s governing body for industry sectors, has bolstered the number of its approved steel scrap suppliers nationally by a further 101, according to a MIIT statement on January 21.
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Inventories of all grades of stainless steel at commercial warehouses in Wuxi and Foshan, China’s two core stainless trading hubs, climbed for the third week over January 15-21, mainly due to the increased arrivals at traders’ warehouses and the slowing demand from users, according to Mysteel’s latest weekly survey. Last week’s rise in stocks was at the faster pace of 8.1% against the prior week’s growth of just 0.6%, the data show.
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Brazilian iron ore miner Vale said that its iron ore shipments and production were unaffected by a fire at one of the eight ship loaders at the Ponta da Madeira Maritime Terminal (PDM terminal) in São Luís, Maranhão, in North Brazil, on January 14, according to Vale’s release on January 21 local time.
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China’s total coking coal imports dropped by 2.8% on year to 72.6 million tonnes in 2020, according to data from China’s General Administration of Customs (GACC). The decrease in volume from Mongolia was chiefly responsible for the decline in coking coal imports across the full year last year, the data shows, though the plunge in total imports since November was most pronounced.
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Despite the hit that the domestic and global economies suffered from the spreading COVID virus last year, Chinese white goods manufacturers managed to maintain comparatively stable production and sales throughout 2020, thanks in part to increasing overseas demand, new official data shows.
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Osaka Steel, Japan’s largest steel sections producer, will keep its list prices of sections unchanged for domestic sales in February, thus giving the market an additional month to absorb the previous price increments, a company official confirmed on January 22.
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Vale, the world’s largest iron ore miner, has resumed production at the 7 million tonnes/year pelletizing plant in Vargem Grande, part of its Southern System in Minas Gerias, South Brazil, on January 20, according to Vale’s release on January 21 local time.
