Prices for iron ore delivered to China, unchanged over the past week as the country began a weeklong break yesterday to celebrate the Lunar New Year, may gather pace after the holiday, Deutsche Bank AG said.
The price of the steelmaking material with 62 percent iron content was $185.60 a metric ton yesterday, the same as on Jan. 26, according to Steel Business Briefing. Prices have risen 9.1 percent this year and reached $186.50 on April 21, the highest for the data going back to November 2008. China made 44 percent of the world’s crude steel in December, according to the World Steel Association.
“Iron-ore spot-trading activity is likely to be quiet during the Chinese New Year holiday period,” Thomas Baldwin, an iron-ore, freight and steel trader with Deutsche Bank in London, said in an note e-mailed late yesterday. Prices may rise toward records after the break when Chinese steel mills restock iron ore, he said.
Lower iron-ore supplies from India, the third-largest exporter that mainly ships to China, may push up global prices in 2011 along with adverse weather in Australia and Canada, BNP Paribas SA analysts Alok Rawat and Karan Gupta said on Jan. 12. Output in India’s Orissa state fell 46 percent last year, the state’s Deputy Director of Mines Umesh Chandra Jena said on Feb. 1. Orissa’s government has cracked down on illegal mining.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alistair Holloway in London ataholloway1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Carpenter atccarpenter2@bloomberg.net.
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