The spot iron ore price has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of strong demand expectations as China reopens its economy after abandoning its strict COVID policy.
Other commodities such as crude oil and copper are also benefiting from recent gains on the back of China's recovery, while iron ore's recovery appears to be building on real gains in demand.
The spot price of the benchmark 62% iron ore MTIOQIN62 = arg ended on January 20 at $ 126 per tonne.
This is an increase of 7.1% since the beginning of the year, and the steel raw material has increased by 59.5% since the last year's low of $ 79 per ton reached on October 31.
At first glance, the increase in prices does not seem to be due to imports from China, which dominates the global maritime trade and buys about 70% of the total shipped volumes.
China's iron ore imports decreased from 90.86 million tons in December to 98.85 million tons in November and were weaker than 94.98 million tons in October.
But December has been a historically soft month for China's imports, and last month's level was actually 5.6% above the December 2021 import level.
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