Production of iron ore in China, the world's biggest consumer of the key steelmaking ingredient, will climb to a record this year as bigger mines open, adding to a global glut that's depressing prices.
Output of low-grade, unprocessed iron ore may rise 5.6 percent to 1.52 billion metric tons this year, Shi Zhenglei, a Shanghai-based analyst with Mysteel.com, China's largest industry consultancy, said in a phone interview. That'sabout 400 million tons of seaborne equivalent, he said.
The potential extra production from China comes even as iron ore entered a bear market in March and fell below $100 last month for the first time since 2012 as top miners including Rio Tinto Ltd and BHP Billiton Ltd expanded output. An increase in Chinese iron ore output would weigh on prices and boost steel mills' bargaining power over imports, Shi said.
"Larger mines are usually owned by steelmakers so production is mostly for their own need," said Shi. "Although mining is money-losing at current prices, they have to put the new mines into operation to achieve cash flow because they've spent a lot on the construction work."
Ore with 62 percent content delivered to the port of Tianjin declined 0.7 percent to $90.90 a dry ton on June 13, the lowest level since September 2012, according to The Steel Index Ltd. Prices lost 3.8 percent last week and retreated in eight of the past nine weeks.
Production of unprocessed ore in China was 1.44 billion tons last year, or about 380 million tons of seaborne equivalent, Mysteel's Shi said.
Iron content
Chinese iron ore typically contains half or less of the iron content found in ore from Australia, the world's top shipper. China's raw ore has an average iron content of 26 percent, according to Shi, compared with the global benchmark of 62 percent iron.
An oversupply of iron ore may last until 2020, Paul Gray, steel and iron ore markets analyst at Wood Mackenzie Ltd, told reporters in Sydney on Monday. Wood Mackenzie forecasts an average iron ore price of $101 a ton in the second-half of 2014 and $98 a ton in 2015, he said.
Morgan Stanley last week reduced its estimate for average iron ore prices to $105 a ton this year from an earlier forecast of $118 in May. Prices may average about $90 a ton in 2015, a drop of 21 percent from an earlier estimate, the bank said.
Producers in China face a rising challenge of cheaper supplies from Australia and Brazil that are spurring a global glut and hurting prices, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. Australia's share of Chinese iron ore imports are forecast to increase to more than 60 percent by 2020, Wood Mackenzie forecast on Monday.
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Modern steelmaking processes can be broken into two categories: primary and secondary steelmaking. Primary steelmaking involves converting liquid iron from a blast furnace and steel scrap into steel via basic oxygen steelmaking or melting scrap steel and/or direct reduced iron (DRI) in an electric arc furnace. Secondary steelmaking involves refining of the crude steel before casting and the various operations are normally carried out in ladles. In secondary metallurgy, alloying agents are added, dissolved gases in the steel are lowered, inclusions are removed or altered chemically to ensure that high-quality steel is produced after casting. 
The Steel industry in China has developed over several decades into the world biggest.[1] China accounted for over 50% of world steel production in 2013. It has driven by rapid modernisation of its economy, construction, infrastructure and manufacturing industries. 
SEKO Machinery Company just got the news from the SteelOrbis said that ,US scrap exports totaled 1,167,874 metric tons in September, which is a 14.7 percent increase from the 995,964 mt exported in August and a 0.77 percent increase from the 1,158,897 mt exported in September 2014. The value of scrap exports in September totaled $326.9 million, compared to $316.3 million in August and $488.2 million in September 2014. The top destinations for US scrap exports during the month were Turkey, with 456,909 mt (up 35.9 percent month-on-month); Mexico, with 154,597 mt (up 55.3 percent month-on-month); Korea, with 89,459 mt (down 47.9 percent month-on-month); India, with 79,963 mt (up 16.7 percent month-on-month); and Taiwan, with 76,227 mt (down 21.5 percent month-on-month). 
Based on the Commerce Department’s most recent Steel Import Monitoring and Analysis (SIMA) data, the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) reported Wednesday that steel import permit applications for the month of October total 3,386,000 net tons (nt). This was a 15 percent increase from the 2,936,000 permit tons recorded in September and a 22 percent increase from the September preliminary imports total of 2,773,000 nt. Import permit tonnage for finished steel in October was 2,357,000, up 9 percent from the preliminary imports total of 2,168,000 in September. For the first ten months of 2015 (including October SIMA and September preliminary), total and finished steel imports were 34,227,000 nt and 27,478,000 nt, respectively, down 8 percent and 1 percent from the same period in 2014. The estimated finished steel import market share in October was 28 percent and is 30 percent year-to-date (YTD). Finished steel imports with large increases in October permits vs. the September preliminary included reinforcing bars (up 131 percent), heavy structural shapes (up 45 percent), wire rods (up 40 percent), sheets and strip all other metallic coated (up 40 percent), hot rolled sheets (up 27 percent) and standard pipe (up 22 percent). Products with significant year-to-date (YTD) increases vs. the same period in 2014 include reinforcing bar (up 50 percent), line pipe (up 26 percent), standard pipe (up 20 percent), tin plate (up 12 percent) and wire drawn (up 10 percent). In October, the largest finished steel import permit applications for offshore countries were for South Korea (364,000 nt, up 31 percent from September preliminary, Turkey (313,000 nt up 107 percent), Brazil (189,000 nt, up 72 percent), Japan (141,000, down 22 percent) and Taiwan (135,000 nt, up 103 percent). Through the first ten months of 2015, the largest offshore suppliers were South Korea (4,313,000 nt, down 6 percent from the same period in 2014), Turkey (2,503,000 nt, up 37 percent) and China (2,167,000, down 20 percent).
The EU’s total steel exports fell four percent year on year over the first eight months of 2015, according to the Economic and Steel Market Outlook 2015-2016/Q4 2015 Report from the Economic Committee of the European Steel Association (EUROFER). EUROFER said that, as in the recent past, EU long steel product exports are dominated by rebar, wire rod and beams. The key destination for EU exports of long products remained Algeria. Other export destinations are Switzerland, the United States, Canada and Turkey. According to EUROFER, the outlook for 2016 is for a rather small increase in EU exports. Since 2011 exports have fluctuated in a fairly narrow bandwidth. Exports in the 2016 look set to remain within the same bandwidth. The sideways trend of annual export volumes to third countries reflects rather difficult business conditions in most export markets, particularly those for commodity products which suffer from immense price pressure. EURFOER expects EU exports to increase by 2.5 percent year on year in 2016. 