China's iron ore futures fall after supply worries
Dalian iron ore has fallen as much as 4.4 % to 3-week lows, as Brazil’s February daily exports outpaced shipments
Chinese iron ore futures have hit their lowest in more than three weeks on Tuesday, after news that Brazil’s average daily exports in February 2018 outpaced shipments.
Brazil’s daily exports reached 1.4 million tonnes of iron ore per business day, despite last month’s mine disaster.
According to Secex data, Brazil’s amount exceeded the average daily shipments of the mineral by almost 8%.
Brazil’s exports paced slower compared with January, with an average of 1.5 million tones of iron ore per day being shipped.
The most-traded iron ore contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange fell as much as 4.4% in early trade on Tuesday, falling an average of 11 % since it’s the highest trade in February.
Hot rolled coil edged 0.1 % higher while coking coal was down 0.4% and spot iron ore for delivery to China inched up.
Construction steel rebar futures were also lower, with the most-active rebar contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange falling as much as 1.4 %.
Vale mining burst tragedy
The Vale mining tragedy saw a tailings dam burst at a Vale iron ore mining facility last month, killing 300 people. Due to the incident, Vale halted all facilities using similar upstream tailings, putting 10% of its output offline.
The incident attracted growing concerns of a major global disruption in production and supply.
Earlier in the month, Chinese traders had led to the exchange hitting its daily limit, seeing the commodity trade as high as the exchange would allow, with the price not able to go higher.
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