Pre-holiday restocking buoys iron ore daily deliveries from ports

SHANGHAI, Jan 4 (SMM) – Higher seaborne arrivals grew iron ore port stocks over the week ended Friday January 4. Pre-holiday restocking at steel mills nudged up daily average deliveries departing ports this week.  

Stocks across 35 major Chinese ports increased by 760,000 mt from a week ago to stand at 131.24 million mt as of Friday January 4, SMM data showed. For the same period, average daily deliveries departing those ports grew 60,000 mt, to stand at 2.44 million mt. 

Jingtang port in Tangshan maintained high daily deliveries of 360,000 mt/day this week. Average daily deliveries leaving major ports along the Yangtze River also jumped, except for a few ports where a malfunction in loading equipment slowed shipments.  

The lingering impact of winter cuts continued to affect deliveries from Tangshan's Caofeidian port, SMM learned.