You can’t stop the iron ore juggernaut with spot Tianjin prices up nearly 8% while Dalian iron ore futures jumped nearly 10% as rebar futures also soared upwards on Monday trade:
This is supposedly due to the Friday news of another landslide at a Vale mine in Brazil, which resulted in the death of one person, while coking coal price lifted again due to another round of price increases in China.
The Chinese look set to produce more than 1 billion tonnes of steel for calendar year 2020 – via Agsteel:
Having bounced back robustly this year from severe coronavirus lockdowns in Q1, China is on track to top 1 billion tons of steel production by the end of 2020, beating 2019’s 996.3 million tons despite steel-consuming industries suffering a lockdown.
Indeed China is the only major producing country to have increased output this year, up 5.6% at the end of October. Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea, and India are all down over the year cumulatively, leading to a global 1.9% reduction.
Nobody can stop the music…..