Iron ore prices hold steady ahead of long weekend

Heading into the long weekend, the spot iron ore prices steadies around $63 per mt mark as the buyers kept waiting on the fringes due to lack of any direction. Steel prices saw some improvement towards the end of the week, which wasn’t enough to push the prices in sea-borne market.

Looking at the benchmark iron ore prices for the week, Platts assessed the 62% Fe IODEX & TSI Iron Ore Fines at $63.10/dry mt CFR North China on Thursday. Meanwhile, TSI 58% Fe Fines, 1.5% Al, CFR Qingdao port closed the week at $50.60/dry mt.

Futures trade

Meanwhile, the prices of steel rebar, coke and coking coal jumped on Friday as the key steel city of Handan in northern China announced new curbs in its fight against pollution, while investors covered short positions to close out the month and first quarter.

The most active rebar contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange closed up 4.4 percent at 3,391 yuan ($540.62) a tonne, surging late in the session after Hebei province announced a 25 percent production cut on Handan’s steel sector from April 1 to Nov. 15 this year.

Meanwhile, the most traded coking coal contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange ended up 5.8 percent at 1,281.50 yuan per tonne, its biggest one-day gain since Nov. 4, 2016, while coke closed up 3.4 percent at 1,822 yuan per tonne. Dalian iron ore closed up 1.6 percent at 443.5 yuan a tonne but still marked its steepest quarterly drop since the third quarter of 2015 at 17.4 percent.