Iron ore price, page-9174

Total of 16.4m tonnes of Robe Valley fines and lump produced to HY ended 30 June 18 (8.7m Rio share or 53% of 16.4m)

As someone had mentioned here earlier, the production outage will benefit FMG.

This Argus article mentions below RV fines competes with SSF and FB in the low grade market too.

RV fines traded at a 34% discount to the benchmark index in December. SSF especially was seeing continual tightening of its discount and this may put a rocket under its realisation price for the short to medium term.

Even before this news was announced, SSF Portside prices had increased by about I USD on Friday.
“China’s steel mills had shown growing preference to lower ferrous content iron ore products such as Super Special fines, FMG Blend fines, Jimblebar fines at the Chinese ports over January 7-11, which was reflected in the price movements too, market sources noted on January 14.
As of last Friday, Mysteel’s for 58% Australian fines port inventories price index posted a Yuan 7/wmt ($1/wmt) week-on-week gain to Yuan 514/wmt, while the price index for the 62% iron ore port inventories stayed at Yuan 566/wmt, both in terms of FOT Qingdao and including the 16% VAT”

Oh and the Dalian had a strong arvo run closing 5.5 up at 513.

It could all be setup for a big day for FMG tomorrow.


https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/...r-cape-lambert-fire-update?backToResults=true

The fire which broke out on 10 January at Cape Lambert port caused damage to a section of the Robe River screen facility that separates Robe Valley lump and fine products, Rio Tinto said.

"The fire has had no impact on the shipping of all other Pilbara iron ore products," the company said.

Rio Tinto's share of Robe Valley lump and fines production was 8.7mn t in the six months to 30 June 2018. The company has a 53pc share in the port, which can handle 205mn t/yr of iron ore, with Japanese firms Mitsui and Nippon Steel owning 33pc and 14pc respectively. Rio Tinto exports iron ore from WA's Cape Lambert and Dampier ports.

Rio Tinto will report its October-December production data on 18 January.

The force majeure announcement may support seaborne prices, as the supply disruption comes as mills restock for the lunar new year holiday early next month and the spring season that starts in late February. But any upside to prices may be limited as the force majeure does not include Rio Tinto's best-selling products PB fines and PB lump.

Robe Valley fines competes with grades such as Yandi fines and fellow Australian producer Fortescue's blended and SSF fines in the low-grade ore category.