Since this time, most of the world's bulk commodities have seen price increases. my country's iron ore imported from Australia is no exception. Since the beginning of this year, it has repeatedly set new highs. The sharp rise in iron ore prices is a microcosm of the global commodity boom. Recently, affected by the decline in inventories and the shutdown of mines in Shanxi, the price of iron ore has continued to rise.
In terms of inventory, this week’s inventory fell by nearly 10 million tons from the April peak, again showing a sharp drop.
In terms of demand, the blast furnace capacity utilization rate of steel mills declined slightly this week, but the output of some varieties continued to rise. Although the production limit of steel mills was announced in many places, most regions still maintained high operating rates, so iron ore demand remained strong. .
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2020, Shanxi’s iron ore ore output was 49.867 million tons, accounting for 5.75% of the country’s total output. Shanxi’s iron ore output from January to April this year was 17.043.9 million tons, accounting for 5.28% of the country's total output, it can be seen that Shanxi Province's raw ore output does not account for a high proportion of the country. In addition, the requirements for this suspension of production are underground mines. The underground iron mines of Shanxi Province account for 67% of the iron mines in the province. Based on the past experience of safety production inspection and shutdown, the general safety inspection will not last more than 2 months. That is to say, according to a rough calculation, if the output is reduced for one month, it may affect the output of Shanxi's raw ore to 2.85 million tons (not more than 800,000 tons of refined powder), so the total impact on the national iron ore supply is relatively limited.
At the same time, after the country's continuous adjustments to the previous rise, the black series once fell sharply. For iron ore, the basic reason for the recent strong rebound in prices is that the recent domestic and foreign iron ore demand remains strong, while foreign mines The slowdown in shipping growth has led to the continued depletion of domestic port inventory and boosted prices. Therefore, the market's focus in the later period may still focus on changes in port inventory.
In general, the recent continuous decline in iron ore port inventory reflects the current tight supply and demand in total, and this week the Shanxi region required all underground mining areas in the province to suspend production and inspection due to a mine accident, which aggravated supply-side concerns and continued the strong pattern .
