| By last month iron-ore prices stood at just a third of their 2011 highs, according to the World Bank’s latest quarterly Commodity Markets Outlook, which was released last week. The iron-ore market has been savaged as new, low-cost supplies have come online — mainly from Australia but also from Brazil — while Chinese demand growth is reducing as China’s economy slows. The steel industry consumes almost all of the world’s iron-ore output and China now produces half of its steel.
Not surprisingly, then, the market hangs on every twist in the Chinese economic saga — which is why speculation in recent weeks that China’s authorities might take extra steps to stimulate the economy has helped to cause a sharp bounce in the iron-ore price globally, and an even sharper jump domestically in the share price of SA’s largest iron-ore producer, Kumba Iron Ore...............................................Full Article: Source
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