Iron-Ore Export Price to Gain at Least 64% : NMDC

31 Mar 2010 Evaluate

NMDC Ltd., Asia’s third-largest iron-ore producer, expects to raise prices by more than 64 percent for steelmakers in Japan and South Korea after Vale SA won a 90 percent increase from Sumitomo Metal Industries Co.

 

NMDC, which exports about 15 percent of its output, is seeking to sell iron ore fines overseas at more than $100 a metric ton starting April 1, according to its Finance Director S. Thiagarajan. NMDC, which currently exports fines at $61 a ton, expects quarterly pricing from the next fiscal year.

 

Vale, the world’s largest iron ore producer, and BHP Billiton Ltd. has ended yesterday a 40-year system of setting annual prices by signing short-term contracts with Asian mills. The increase in global prices will have an impact on NMDC’s local contracts. The domestic buyers will also have to fork out more for iron ore, boosting NMDC’s profit in the June quarter.

 

The contract prices for local buyers, is at $43 a ton, this will also increase from the next fiscal year after negotiations are completed this week.

 

However one has to watch how the Chinese react to the higher contract prices that the Japanese (Sumitomo) have agreed to pay. China, the largest buyer of iron ore, is still in price talks with the three biggest producers. Chinese mills oppose a demand to increase prices by 90 percent. Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton are the world’s second-largest and third-biggest iron- ore suppliers.

 

Iron-ore prices will increase as much as 30 percent, Thiagarajan had said earlier this month. Now with current expected hike in prices may lift profit to a record in the year starting April 1. NMDC’s profit in the last fiscal year rose to 43.72 billion rupees ($962 million), the company’s highest.

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