SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Dalian iron ore futures prices snapped a four-day winning streak on Monday as increasing levies on Chinese steel dampened demand prospects for the key steelmaking ingredient, though decreasing portside inventories in China limited the fall.
The most-traded May iron ore contract on China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) traded 0.89% lower at 831.5 yuan ($114.87) a metric ton, as of 0250 GMT.
The benchmark March iron ore on the Singapore Exchange ticked 0.22% lower at $108.25 a ton.
Vietnam will impose a temporary anti-dumping levy of up to 27.83% on some steel products from China, according to a trade ministry document seen by Reuters.
The move comes after U.S. President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on all steel imports earlier this month, with South Korea following suit and provisionally imposing tariffs on Chinese steel plates last week.
“Production among Chinese blast furnace steel producers continued edging down as more mills started regular maintenance works,” said Chinese consultancy Mysteel.
The capacity utilisation rate of the blast furnace steel mills surveyed decreased for a second straight week, with daily hot metal production decreasing 0.21% on-week to 2.28 million as of February 20, Mysteel data showed.
Hot metal output is typically used to gauge iron ore demand.
Still, global iron ore shipments have fallen slightly year-on-year, affected by Australian weather, Chinese consultancy Hexun Futures said in a note, adding that port inventories are expected to fall.
Portside iron ore inventories in China fell 1.15% to 145.8 million metric tons as of February 21, weekly data tracked by SteelHome showed.
Other steelmaking ingredients on the DCE fell, with coking coal and coke down 1.77% and 2.46%, respectively.
Most steel benchmarks on the Shanghai Futures Exchange posted losses. Rebar edged down 0.8%, hot-rolled coil declined 1.3%, stainless steel dipped 0.49%, while wire rod was up 0.76%.
($1 = 7.2384 yuan)
(Reporting by Michele Pek; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
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