Just come in the Money Morning email:CVRD cuts shipments, iron...

Just come in the Money Morning email:

CVRD cuts shipments, iron ore prices expected to soar
Iron ore supplies could be thin over the next month or so. The world’s biggest producer, Brazil’s Vale (NYSE:RIO), has halted shipments from one of its Brazil ports until February. It’ll reduce output by 60,000 tonnes per day. Last year the company sold around 273 million tonnes. That’s about 750,000 tonnes per day. So during January, Vale’s iron output could drop by around 8%. If it were a junior this would a different story. But Vale is the undisputed big cheese of iron ore. Analysts expect the spot price of iron to test all-time records this week. Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) will respond by drooling everywhere. It’ll be selling 15 million tonnes in that same spot market over the course of 2008. Now seems a good time to be a seller. Yet China never seems to get enough iron.