Further to my last post, in July 2018 exports from Brazil were...

Further to my last post, in July 2018 exports from Brazil were 36mt which pretty much tracked average weekly shipments in July 2018 of about 8.45mt per week. These were the numbers for 3 of the weeks published:

7.63mt 8 July 2018 W/E

8.64mt 22 July 2018 W/E

9.1mt 29 July 2018 W/E

In July this year, shipments averaged about 6mt per week, which is about 27mt for the month.

Therefore, YOY July IO shipments from Brazil this year were 25% lower than July 2018.

This is worse than the previous couple of months and confirms that there is barely any improvement coming from Vale’s operations.

Most articles are touting that these are the best numbers since Oct last year, which is absolute rubbish (explained also in previous post).

Brutchu restart at the end of June would barely had made a dint into the July numbers contrary to what the media have been saying. By the time the 3 day waiting period before restart concluded, production going back online and ramped up, IO transported to port and shipped out, there woulf not have been much IO from this mine shipped out in July. Mind you it is only an additional 20mtpa of wet processing that had been approved. Vale were still able to dry process 10mtpa from this mine.

The next 2 months are very likely going to see a considerable drop in IO inventories. The imbalance between demand and supply has not improved anywhere near as much as the market is making it out to be.