China’s Jan-Nov iron ore concentrates output dips 6.3% yoy

31-Dec-2018

China’s domestic iron ore concentrates output over January-November totalled 214.7 million tonnes, or down 14.5 million tonnes or 6.3% on year, Lei Pingxi, chief engineer of the Metallurgical Mines’ Association of China, shared at a recent industrial event.

The breakdown by Chinese provinces showed that the concentrates output fell the most in North China’s Hebei, down 10 million tonnes on year, and then a total dip of 5.6 million tonnes in North China’s Inner Mongolia and Shanxi, Central China’ Hubei, East China’s Anhui, and Southwest China’s Yunnan, all being China’s major iron ore mining bases, Lei elaborated, which was confirmed by China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute on December 25, a sponsor of the industrial event on December 22 in Beijing.

“Five main factors have been affecting China’s iron ore concentrates output this year including environmental checks, work and equipment safety inspections, technological upgrading, shut-downs of some small-sized mines and temporary suspensions during China’s top political events in March,” a Shanghai-based iron ore analyst said.

“Regions such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei area and the Fenwei Plains, both in North China, have been under close scrutiny and especially sensitive to the policy environment,” he added.

In contrast, iron ore concentrates output in Northeast China’s Liaoning province increased by 5.5 million tonnes on year, according to Lei, which the analyst interpreted as being less influenced by all the five factors, and Northeast China has been an area that Beijing encourages its economic development in general.

Liaoning is China’s second largest iron ore production base only after Hebei, according to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics, and Hebei, Liaoning, Southwest China’s Sichuan, Shanxi and Anhui ranked the top five nationwide, accounting for 73% of the total run-of-mines iron ore over January-November , Mysteel calculates basing on the official data of NBS in the databank.

Mysteel released its annual iron ore market report in late December, estimating China’s domestic iron ore concentrates output for 2018 to reach 249.85 million tonnes, down 12.78 million tonnes on year.

Over January-November, among the domestically-produced iron ore concentrates, the mines with capacities lower than 100,000 tonnes/year fell by 8.6 million tonnes, more substantially than the year-on-year decline of 5.9 million tonnes from the 100,000-300,000 t/y mines, according to Lei, which could be partly due to the shut-downs of the smaller mines.

Source: MYSTEEL GLOBAL