Iron ore price, page-23385

Looks like a spot of bother.

Last week, till Friday, blast furnace capacity utilisation at 247 steel mills in China actually declined on week by 5.2% to (wait for it) 94.8%. Damn! That means they are only consuming 3.13 million tonnes of iron ore per day, or, at this rate 97.03 million tonnes per month of imported iron ore. Drats!

On more promising news, if we look at the inventories for these 247 mills, including their stocks at the mill, at the port and on the water, they actually declined for the second week in a row to a 109.5 million tonnes, which is just enough iron ore to last for 34.97 days (not that anyone is counting!).

https://www.mysteel.net/article/5017937-050102/WEEKLY--China-BF-capacity-utilization-recedes-to-948.html

So what is driving this intense consumption of imported fines?

Well, industrial growth in China was up 4.8%, YoY, for July, with 69.3% of large industrial enterprises now at 80% of normal production; there was a surge of 89% (YoY) in July of heavy truck sales to 140,000 units for the month, and, by the end of June, China was building 15,000 5G towers per week, (these things use a lot of HRC steel) and had reached a total of 400,000 towers already constructed. Then there are the rail infrastructure projects, and construction in general. China just needs a lot of steel these days.

And just who is going to provide the raw material for all that? Hmmm?



Labourers work on the construction site of a high-speed railway in Linyi, China.