Covid-19

Australia sends troops to help contain virus on ore ship near Port Hedland

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By Paulina Duran and Melanie Burton | Reuters

Australian defence personnel are being deployed to Port Hedland, one of the world’s largest iron ore loading ports, to help contain a coronavirus outbreak on a bulk carrier that last changed crews in the major seafaring city of Manila.

Seventeen of the 21 crew of the carrier have tested positive for the virus, ship owner Oldendorff Carriers said in a statement.

Ten of the infected crew members have been moved to hotel quarantine, and seven remain on board as part of a nine-person crew, authorities said.

Oldendorff said the crew change on Sept. 5 in Manila complied with all protocols.

“All crew members tested negative for the virus before leaving the Philippines,” Oldendorff said…Full Story

Pick-up in Exports & Policy Support to save Indian Steel Industry

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India Infoline News Service

To compensate for the low domestic demand, Indian players are looking to cater to export markets.

India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra) has published its COVID-19 Impact assessment for India’s steel sector. The report highlights key themes and expected outcomes while presenting Ind-Ra’s revenue base case assumptions, its updated sector outlook, a steel sector cycle study and a break-even analysis of key market players. The agency has also covered Ind-Ra’s recent rating actions. This is in continuation of the sector market wires and reports published during March 2020 and April 2020.

To compensate for the low domestic demand, Indian players are looking to cater to export markets. Indian products’ price competitiveness may seem to have improved with lower iron ore prices than international iron ore prices. Chinese steel producers’ cost of production has been going up due to high raw material costs and environmental compliance costs…Full Story

Could a shutdown of Indonesian coal and nickel exports be on the cards?

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By Bevis Yeo | Stockhead

Indonesia’s exports of thermal coal and nickel could be under threat of shut-downs due to growing concerns that the country has under-reported the number of cases of COVID-19.

With 1,414 cases and 122 fatalities reported as of March 31, Indonesia has now declared a health emergency and moved to suspend foreign arrivals and impose large-scale social restrictions.

Despite this, suspicions have been raised that the actual number of infections may be higher than reported due to its relatively low testing rate.

UBS noted that while there have been some private mine closures, Indonesia has yet to issue a mandate to halt operations like in Peru, South Africa and Argentina.

It added that while thermal coal prices would receive support from an Indonesian shut-down, it would provide a significant lift to nickel prices…Full Story

Seaborne thermal coal traders wary on near-term imports as COVID-19 worsens in Indonesia

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By Fred Wang | Platts

An uptick in the number of coronavirus cases in Indonesia have stoked concerns on the possibility for various coal consuming regions to implement more stringent checks on ships coming from Kalimantan, sources said Monday.

China imported 68.1 million mt of coal in the first two months of this year, up 33.3% from 51.1 million mt from the year-ago figure, according to data from the country’s General Administration of Customs.

Seaborne thermal coal traders largely attributed the reason for the surge in imports to a domestic production crunch since the COVID-19 outbreak in late January.

A South China-based trader said incoming ships from Indonesia might have to go through Chinese quarantine checks, just like how outgoing Chinese ships faced safety checks earlier last month.

Some ports in southern China have already imposed import restrictions on seaborne coal, and it could worsen if China decides to further quarantine and check on incoming Indonesian ships, said an east China-based source…Full Story

My Steel Feature: China raw material supplies up, and steel?

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Heavy-duty trucking needs more time back to full mode

When steelmaking raw materials transportation by water and by rail has been steadily and gradually recovering to their normal levels since early February especially in the past two weeks, iron ore transhipment from sea ports to the ports along the Yangtze River had been running as per normal now, a Shanghai-based industrial source said.

Trucking especially inter-province transportation, however, has remained an issue, as road transportation has been hit more severely by epidemic, which many highways blocked all the way until the past week or so.

To encourage more heavy-duty trucks back on road, China’s Ministry of Transportation has removed tolling fees on all the highways since February 17, requesting the provincial and regional authorities to remove the road blocks.

Some Chinese steel mills may feel the inconvenience less keenly due to their heavy reliance on rail or different locations, Mysteel Global noted.

“Most of our iron ore and coal are sent to our plant by rail, so our blast furnaces have not been seriously affected by lack of trucks,” an official from a Shanxi-based steel plant shared, though, their ferroalloys supplies, most by truck, had been disrupted and not much improvement had been detected yet, according to him.

An iron ore procurement official from a steel mill in Hebei of North China shared, though, that, their iron ore trucking “has returned to normal recently especially when many highways have reopened for traffic with no charges”…Full Story

Rio Tinto adds voice to COVID-19 outbreak concerns after reporting iron ore windfall

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By David McKay

RIO Tinto is the latest major mining company to flag the potentially disruptive impact of COVID-19 saying at its annual results announcement that the outbreak could “create significant uncertainty” in the short-term, according to a report by Bloomberg News.

Rio Tinto, which earns about half of its revenue from China, said all “… operations are looking at opportunities to adjust to the impact of the COVID-19 virus on market conditions,” according to a results announcement cited by the newswire.

The mining group’s Oyu Tolgoi copper operation in Mongolia earlier flagged it was experiencing a slowdown in exports to China.

The Anglo-Australian group said it would “… adjust production levels and product mix to meet customer requirements,” if the global growth outlook worsens…Full Story

China iron ore hits 1-1/2-month high on supply concerns, stimulus hopes

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By Enrico Dela Cruz | Reuters

China’s iron ore futures climbed to their highest in more than six weeks on Monday after data showed stockpiles of the steelmaking raw material at the country’s ports declined for two consecutive weeks.

Beijing’s promise to step up policy support to counter the economic fallout from a coronavirus outbreak also lent support not just to iron ore but to steel futures as well.

The Dalian Commodity Exchange’s most-traded iron ore contract, expiring in May, rose as much as 2.0% to 683.50 yuan ($97.29) a tonne, the highest since Jan. 8.

If sustained, the benchmark contract will mark its tenth consecutive session of gains. The last nine saw it rising 15.5% in its longest rally since June 2016 amid declining supplies from Australia and Brazil, which have pushed spot prices to four-week highs…Full Story

CargoMetrics data reveals depth of China cargo collapse

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By Greg Miller | American Shipper

Just how severely has the coronavirus curtailed cargo flows to and from China, the world’s most important trade engine? Chinese government data is both after-the-fact and suspect, but Boston-based big-data company CargoMetrics is now providing a real-time answer.

CargoMetrics has spent the past decade amassing and analyzing ship-movement data, discerning patterns and developing quantitative predictive algorithms. It’s now bringing its powers to bear on what’s happening in China.

The company has just publicly released data that sheds new light on what transpired in the weeks following Chinese New Year (CNY). To better understand what the numbers mean, FreightWaves interviewed CargoMetrics CEO Scott Borgerson and Dan Brutlag, head of trading signal and data products.

Chinese imports in “freefall”

The first dataset tracks Chinese import tonnage, indexed in relation to CNY (1.0 = 5 days prior to CNY) for 2020 versus the 2012-2019 average.

“The data covers energy, dry, container activity, and other activity,” explained Brutlag. “Our model is based primarily on the net mass transferred by a vessel.” The mass is accounted for on the day it’s transferred on or off the ship…Full Story