Thursday, April 8, 2010

Indian Iron Ore Rises In Respond To Boycott

Price Rises $10 In One Week


Spot prices of Indian iron ore soared to $183.10 per tonne on Thursday in response to the China Iron and Steel Association’s call for a boycott of the big three global miners, Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. CISA called the boycott after the big three sought a 90 per cent rate hike, moved to quarterly pricing and scrapped the annual iron ore benchmark system.

Spot prices of 63.5% Indian iron ore fines stood at $181.70-$183.10 per tonne on Thursday, up from $171 a tonne a week ago, before CISA called for a boycott of iron ore produced by the big three global miners.

Meanwhile Chinese media reports that the 19 major Chinese ports currently have stockpiles of 67.37 million tonnes of iron ore this week, down by155,000 tonnes from a week ago. Only Qingdao and Rizhao ports – the latter China’s main iron ore port – showed increases in their stockpile. Dalian Port had 2.02 million tons of iron ore in stock, a fall of 330,000 tons from last week, while Caofeidian Port in northern China's Hebei province had 3.45 million tons, down by 150,000 tonnes.

See also: China bans low-grade iron ore imports


1 comment:

sidagrwal said...

Moreover CISA is also exploring avenues to stop iron ore imports from small miners. As it thinks that they were responsible for undermining its position in the last year contract talks. If it goes through then this will adversely affect the developing iron ore export market in India as the two leading export destinations i.e. Goa and Bellary Hospet are fraught with a host of small miners/traders. To quote, out of the total 300 small mines in India, most if it are less than 2mtpa capacity and bigger ones are either held by public sector or large private like Sesa Goa.