keywords :
Shipments from the four largest iron ore producers in the Pilbara region of Western Australia (WA) were average in the week to 27 February, as a strong performance by Rio Tinto offset the impact of maintenance at Roy Hill.
The four WA producers — Rio Tinto, BHP, Fortescue Metals and Roy Hill — loaded vessels with 17.17mn deadweight tonnes (dwt) of capacity in the latest week. This was up from 16.36mn dwt in the week ending 20 February and slightly below the average of 17.36mn dwt/week over the past year.
The Pilbara producers shipped around 62mn t of iron ore in February, up from 57.5mn t a year earlier but down from 66.5mn t in January, according to estimates compiled by Argus from initial shipping data. February shipments were disrupted by two tropical lows passing near iron ore ports, but this caused less disruption than Cyclone Damien that hit the Pilbara coast in February 2020.
The deadweight tonnage is the maximum capacity of the vessel and overestimates actual shipments by around 5pc.
Roy Hill loaded vessels with 389,000dwt capacity in the latest week, down from 416,000dwt a week earlier and 63pc below its annual rolling average of 1.12mn dwt/week. Roy Hill, which is raising output to 60mn t/yr from 55mn t/yr, regularly stops shipping for around a week each quarter, with the last shutdown in mid-November. The firm is applying to expand output further to 65mn t/yr, which may help reduce the need for these quarterly shutdowns.
Fortescue shipped 3.42mn dwt, up from 3.01mn dwt the week before but 3pc below its average of 3.54mn dwt. BHP loaded vessels with 5.86mn dwt capacity in the latest week, up from 5.18mn dwt the previous week and in line its average. Fortescue, BHP and Roy Hill all use the Port Hedland multi-user facility to export ore.
Rio Tinto, which operates out of its one export facilities at the ports of Dampier and Walcott, shipped 7.5mn dwt, down from 7.75mn dwt in the week to 20 February but still 9pc above its annual rolling average of 6.87mn dwt.
China was listed as the destination for 73pc of total shipments in the latest week, down from 75pc a week earlier. After including shipments with unconfirmed destinations — most of which are likely headed to China — the percentage was 76pc, down from 83pc a week earlier and below the average of 83pc.
Argus yesterday assessed the ICX price for 62pc Fe at $174.70/dry metric tonne (dmt), up from $157.45/dmt on 1 February and down slightly from a record high of $175.70 on 22 February.