Prices for iron ore delivered to China are falling as buyers turn to stockpiles of the steelmaking ingredient, eroding demand for new supplies, Deutsche Bank AG said.
The price of ore with 62 percent iron content has slid 3.6 percent since Feb. 17 to $184.90 a metric ton, according to Steel Business Briefing Commodities Research. That cut the past year’s gain to 41 percent. China made 44 percent of the world’s crude steel in January, according to the World Steel Association.
“Any material bought by steel mills seems to be out of lower-priced port stock,” Thomas Baldwin, an iron-ore, freight and steel trader with Deutsche Bank in London, said in a note e- mailed late yesterday. He predicted that the market will “remain relatively quiet over the next week as traders are taking a ‘wait and see’ approach, and as a result, we will see a gradual price decline.”
Chinese steelmakers should boost overseas iron-ore mine investment to secure supplies, the China Iron and Steel Association said today at a press conference in Beijing. Global iron-ore supply will remain tight in the first half of 2011, Luo Bingsheng, former vice chairman and current special adviser to the association, told the conference.
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