Port Rizhao, China. Stock image. <\/p>\n
Iron ore touched multi-month lows on Monday amid concerns over demand in top consumer China and rising portside ore inventories, although falling shipments helped pare some losses in the afternoon trading.<\/p>\n
The most-traded January iron ore contract on China\u2019s Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE) ended daytime trade little changed at 765 yuan ($107.40) a metric ton. The contract hit its lowest level since July 10 at 756 yuan earlier in the session.<\/p>\n
The benchmark December iron ore on the Singapore Exchange was up 0.72% at $102 a ton, as of 07:25 GMT, after hitting its lowest level since September 1 at $100.85 earlier.<\/p>\n
Prices were supported by lower global shipments, which slipped to the lowest level in two months, data from consultancy Mysteel showed.<\/p>\n
Further signs of easing trade tensions between China and the United States also boosted risk appetite.<\/p>\n
China said on Monday that it would suspend port fees levied on US-linked vessels for a year.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, data showing China\u2019s producer price deflation eased in October and consumer prices returned to positive territory due to efforts to curb overcapacity and cut-throat competition among firms, also boosted sentiment.<\/p>\n
However, price gains were curbed by pressure from lower demand amid wider production cuts triggered by losses.<\/p>\n
That came even as some regions in northern China, including key steel production hub Tangshan, lifted environmental protection-led production controls from Sunday.<\/p>\n
Resilient raw material prices and softening downstream demand have squeezed steel margins, propelling some mills to start equipment maintenance, said analysts.<\/p>\n
Iron ore inventory at major Chinese ports rose 2.1% to 138.44 million tons \u2013 the highest since March 21- as of November 7 from the previous week, data from consultancy SteelHome showed.<\/p>\n
Coking coal and coke, other steelmaking ingredients, slid 1.02% and 1.19%, respectively.<\/p>\n
Most steel benchmarks on the Shanghai Futures Exchange bucked the downtrend. Rebar added 0.26%, hot-rolled coil nudged up 0.06%, stainless steel advanced 0.28% while wire rod shed 0.12%.<\/p>\n
($1 = 7.1230 Chinese yuan)<\/p>\n
(By Amy Lv and Lewis Jackson; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and Eileen Soreng)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Port Rizhao, China. Stock image. Iron ore touched multi-month lows on Monday amid concerns over demand in top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-274739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}