Iron ore price, page-5558

I know you tend to take longer term strategic views on your investments from previous posts of yours. I recall seeing a video you posted where scrap iron was being included in to the production where blast furnaces (from memory) where otherwise providing most of the iron input.

Have you taken a look at the relative costs and relative pollution produced using different iron ore contents?

Ultimately I think that sort of analysis will be at the root of whether the discount levels (for FMG ores versus 62%platts) are going to be mostly cyclic or mostly structural. In the end economics will dictate. But whether the cost of pollution is included in the economic calculation is unclear and depends on politics (how much pollution and in what locations (coastal regions with winds going out to sea might be better) will chinese govts - central and local wear). And there are sunk costs in Chinese steel production assets - so there are potentially going to be some limits on how fast steel makers can change to accept different iron ore grades (or pellets and lumps) as inputs without having to change the large-scale assets.

As I understand they can play around with the percentages of sinter (iron ore plus coke) and pellets and lumps that go into each blast furnace feed. But I don't know if there is good data on what pollution comes off with the use of different input feed combinations. Do you know?

Minimising pollution without changing current steel producing assets might just come down to, mostly, minimising the use of coke.