War and Iron ore demand

Great notes this morning TB. Keep it up.

Given the events over the week i did some research, and have concluded if there is a large breakout of war it is likely to be good for iron ore demand and prices:
- when the Russian Ukraine war broke out, iron prices rose $22 per tonne in the first week;
- militaries have voracious demand for iron ore in battle: tanks, troop transports, aircraft, ships, submarines, guns and missiles all use high quantities of iron ore. All the things that are blown up such as buildings, bridges and infrastructure need to be replaced consuming vast quantities of iron ore.
- access to iron ore in world war 2 was crucial to the Russian win against the Germans: it was the tank battles at kursk, citadel, stalingrad etc that were the decisive factor. In fact, Russia sustained significantly higher losses in these battles, typically 2 to 1 losses with tanks, but they could build a lot more and a lot quicker because of access to iron ore. For example, at Kursk Russia lost about 2000 tanks to Germany's 1000, but over the entire war Russia produced about 50,000 T34 tanks wheras Germany only produced about 8000 panzer and tiger tanks.
- Germany was basically dependent on Sweden for access to iron ore during ww 2, pre war it imported about 25% of its iron ore needs from Sweden, and during the war this rose to 40%. They say part of the reason Germany invaded Norway was to pressure Sweden to keep supplying them with iron ore: increase iron ore supply to us, or we will invade you next.

The next wars are being fought with missiles and drones much more than the historical iron ore heavy equipmeent; but i still think all the stuff they are destroying such as tanks, buildings, infrastructure, increases demand for iron ore.

Increased military spending by a lot of countries should increase demand for iron ore to build all the military equipment.

Obviously if it was a big war which destroyed factories that use iron ore in the production process, such as car manufacturing plants etc, this would be a negative.

But all up, i think more likely to be positive than negative.

Interested if there are counter views.