Xiangtan Iron & Steel Hikes Manganese Ball Bid Price in November

The average spot prices of EMM in main producing areas fell by 500 yuan/mt to 15,000-17,300 yuan/mt compared with the average prices before the Qingming festival, and the average prices of FOB fell by $100/mt to $2,500-2,800/mt.

As of March 25, the average EMM prices across the major EMM producing regions fell by 3,500 yuan/mt on the week, with mainstream prices ranging between 18,000-22,000 yuan/mt. The overall decline eased in the second half of last week, with a cool atmosphere for supply and demand negotiations.

Although the downstream stocking is about to end, the spot stainless steel prices in Foshan rose more than expected last week.

On 13 December, Baosteel Desheng took the lead in issuing the Initiative on Jointly Maintaining the Order of the 200-Series Market and Regulating Market Behaviour and committed to cut the output of 200-series products from the perspective of balancing market demand and supply, by maintaining only one blast furnace in production by March 2022 in an effort to scale back the overall supply by more than 60%.

According to SMM statistics, the total supply of EMM in November was 91,300 mt, a decrease of 5% from the previous month. At the beginning of December, both supply and demand in the manganese market were weak, and the decline in the social inventories slowed down.

The average EMM prices across the three major EMM producing (Songtao in Guizhou, Huayuan in Hunan, and Xiushan in Chongqing) and Guangxi stood at 40,000-40,500 yuan/mt last week, down 1,250 yuan/mt from a week ago.

South Africa’s national power company Eskom said on October 23 that it would cut the power supply by 2,000 megawatts due to the failure of the generator sets of its six power plants. The power curtailment continued until Oct 25.

China’s total exports of wrought manganese, manganese products, unwrought manganese, shredded scrap, and powder stood at 33,100 mt in August, down 4.32% month on month but up 22.73% year on year, according to SMM statistics.

The news of production cut triggered strong bullish sentiments in the futures market, and SHFE SS 2110 contract rose to the daily limit last Monday.

South32’s initial offers for Australian lump manganese ore with 45.5% Mn, for August delivery to China, came in at $4.61/mtu, down $0.72/mtu from a month ago.