There is scheduled maintenance on 21 blast furnaces (BFs) in May, reducing capacity by 78,000 tonnes/day, and nine BFs will resume production within the month, increasing capacity by 32,000 tonnes/day, Mysteel said in a report. Rebar on the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell 2.66% to a near six-month low at 3,544 yuan a tonne, hot-rolled coil retreated 2.9%, and stainless steel slid 1.2%. ($1 = 6.9089 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Amy Lv and Dominique Patton in Beijing; Editing by Sonia Cheema)
BEIJING, May 5 (Reuters) - Singapore and Dalian iron ore
futures refreshed five-month lows on Friday, dragged down
further by renewed fears of a U.S. bank crisis and lingering
worries of diminishing demand amid production reduction among
some Chinese steelmakers.
Shares of U.S. regional banks resumed their slide this week
after the collapse of First Republic Bank, the third mid-sized
lender to fail in two months.
"Ongoing turmoil in US regional banks continued to dominate
headlines and markets overnight," analysts at ANZ bank said in a
note.
Meanwhile, iron ore demand continued to shrink with the
daily hot metal output among the surveyed 247 steel mills
declining by 1.3% week-on-week to 2.41 million tonnes in the
week as of May 5, data from consultancy Mysteel showed.
The benchmark June iron ore on the Singapore
Exchange was down 5.02% at $94.45 a tonne, as of 0217 GMT, the
lowest since November 28, 2022.
The most-traded September iron ore on the Dalian Commodity
Exchange (DCE) traded 3.69% lower at 678.5 yuan
($98.21) a tonne, as of 0211 GMT, the lowest since December 2,
2022.
"Some mills planned to increase equipment maintenance amid
shrinking margins, which will further cap demand for iron ore in
the short term," analysts at Sinosteel Futures said in a note.
"We expect portside (iron ore) inventories to gradually step
into a cycle of picking up later," they added.
Similarly, weak fundamentals continued to weigh on the other
steelmaking ingredients, with coking coal losing 3.11%
and coke falling 2.37%.
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