Re: Kohle, Stahl, Tantal

verfasst von Bob, 09.12.2003, 11:34

-->Dow Jones Business News
Iron Ore Prices To Rise Steeply Despite Expansion Binge
Tuesday December 9, 4:02 am ET
By Stephen Bell, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

PERTH -(Dow Jones)- Despite a US$3.5 billion spending binge on supply expansion in Australia and Brazil, analysts expect iron ore prices to rise steeply next year.
Contract prices are expected to rise by as much as 15% as major suppliers such as Rio Tinto Plc (NYSE:RTP - News) and BHP Billiton scramble to satisfy the growing iron ore appetite of Asian steel mills.
But some analysts are more cautious, warning that one of the bigger producers may decide to temper the price increase in exchange for guaranteed market share.
"Clearly Chinese demand is very strong, but there is a lot of new supply being talked about," said Glyn Lawcock, an analyst at investment bank UBS.
"There is a risk that a more conservative company such as Rio Tinto could look to take a lower-than-expected price increase in return for guaranteed volumes," said Lawcock.
"With China now prepared to sign three to five-year deals on volumes, compared with 12 months historically, one of the producers may see the virtue of locking in long-term contracts," he added.
Reflecting China's growing influence, Shanghai Baosteel Group and 11 other major Chinese steel makers recently unveiled plans to form an alliance to negotiate prices with suppliers.
However, people with knowledge of the industry say that China will still defer to a benchmark price set annually by Japanese mills, including the powerful Nippon Steel Corp..
The producer side negotiations are led by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Brazil's CVRD. The two sides have likely met for one or two preliminary rounds since their"familiarization" session at the Australia-Japan iron ore conference in October.
But a settlement may still be some months away.
"I wouldn't think that anything will happen before Christmas," said one person familiar with the talks.
UBS predicts a price increase of 11% for the Japanese fiscal year ending March 31, 2005. The broker concedes that some producers may be arguing for an even bigger rise to compensate for the recent appreciation of the Australian currency against the U.S. dollar.
"But currency is just one of many factors to be discussed in the negotiating process," Lawcock said, adding that supply-demand factors normally dominate.
Despite the tight Asian market, UBS predicts that contract prices will be settled first in Europe, as they were for 2003 prices."Japanese steel mills are usually unwilling to settle first on large price increases," Lawcock said.
BHP Billiton May Have More Expansion Planned
The world's three biggest iron ore producers are accelerating expansion plans as they scramble to meet demand from China and other Asian markets.
CVRD plans to spend around US$2 billion on its iron ore operations, including a major expansion of its Carajas mine to 70 million tons per year from 56 million tons at present.
Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto announced last week that it will spend US$920 million expanding its Hamersley iron ore operations mostly on lifting shipping capacity in Western Australia by nearly 60%.
Rio's upgrade comes amid similar moves by competitor BHP Billiton, which is spending more than US$600 million expanding its Western Australian shipping capacity to 100 million tons.
UBS Lawcock expects BHP Billiton to soon unveil a further expansion that may boost total capacity to around 140 million tons.
Analysts say that producers are playing catch-up with surging Asian demand, with Chinese iron ore imports likely to rise 30% in 2003.
According to Japan's Tex Report which tracks the resources sector, China's imports may reach 145 million metric tons this year, eclipsing Japan for the first time. Purchases by Japan are put at about 131 million tons.
Hayden Bairstow, an analyst at stockbroker Paterson Ord Minnett, forecasts a 10% price increase next year."The extent of Chinese demand has caught some of the producers by surprise," Bairstow said.
"And new projects such as Hope Downs are progressing. So the majors are keen to get their full capacity expansions onstream and fully sold before Hope Downs gets anywhere near the same level of production."
Owned by South Africa's Kumba Resources and private Australian group Hancock Prospecting, Hope Downs aims to start production in 2007.
Stockbroker GoldmanSachs JB Were predicts a 15% price increase. It said that Rio Tinto appears comfortable with the demand outlook in China to warrant the proposed US$920 million expansion."On our estimates of demand growth for iron ore, we believe Rio would have lost market share (to BHP, CVRD or others) over the next decade if it did not expand," the broker said.
Another investment bank, Credit Suisse First Boston, recently upgraded its iron ore price forecast to 12.5%. But CSFB sounds a note of caution about the durability of China's current iron ore binge, some of which has been funded by debt.
"We note that the Chinese central bank has advised commercial banks to be careful in opening letters-of-credit for iron ore (and some other commodities) imports," it said in a recent report.
CSFB said that Chinese steelmakers no longer enjoy a price discount compared with their Japanese counterparts.
"With China now the world's largest importer of iron ore, we expect the Chinese industry to become more active in annual price negotiations to try to address this new premium they are paying," the broker said.
-By Stephen Bell, Dow Jones


Coal Exporters Set To Squeeze Japanese Steel Mills
Tuesday December 9, 3:13 am ET
By Eric Johnston, Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

MELBOURNE -(Dow Jones)- Australian coal miners including BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto (RIO) are set to take advantage of strong Asian demand to lock-in substantial price increases from Japan's biggest steel mills.
As the latest round of talks gain momentum in Tokyo, the producers hold most of the aces over their biggest customers, with some analysts predicting a price rise of nearly 20% for premium grade hard coking coal.
Growing Chinese demand, the improved profitability of the Japanese steel sector and a widening gap between spot and contract prices has fueled confidence among Australian negotiators of winning benchmark price increases for the 2004- 05 Japanese fiscal year which begins April 1.
The talks, which began about two weeks ago, are also a guide to later negotiations with steel producers in South Korea and Taiwan.
"There are opportunities for Australian producers, it's the best I've seen it for some time," said Ugo Cario, the managing director of Austal Coal Ltd., a mid-sized Australian producer.
"We've got more offers on the table than we can put to the market," he said.
After last year suffering a cut in Japanese benchmark prices of around 4% to US$46 a ton, analysts expect producers such as BHP Billiton, Anglo American Plc (NasdaqSC:AAUK - News; AAUK), Xstrata (XTA.LN), Rio Tinto and Wesfarmers, to more than claw back losses and extract average gains of around 8.7% to US$50 per ton.
"The hard coking coal market has tightened appreciably over the last few months," said Paul Gray, a commodities analyst with Goldman Sachs JBWere in London.
"Even the buyers are now starting to concede that hard coking coal prices will rise next year, it's just a matter of how much," he said.
Some industry players have suggested small shipments of Canadian hard coking coal recently sold into Japan at US$50 per ton.
Making up more than half of the world's coking coal trade, Australian exports are forecast to increase by 1.5 million tons to around 109 million tons in fiscal 2003-04, with most of the extra volume coming from Rio Tinto's new Hail Creek mine in Queensland.
But given the appreciation of the Australian dollar, the value of these exports is forecast to fall by almost 12% to A$6.6 billion, according to the government's Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics.
Surging A$ Takes Gloss Off Price Hikes For Producers
Combined with thermal coal, which traditionally attracts lower pricing, coal is Australia's biggest single export with total earnings of more than A$10 billion annually.
Some other analysts are even more bullish on coking coal, also known as metallurgical coal which is used to make coke, a key ingredient in steel-making.
Sydney-based Macquarie Bank believes benchmark Japanese contracts for hard coking coal could swing to five year highs, averaging as much as US$55 a ton, translating to increases of around 19.5%.
Underpinning this is China, where a booming steel industry has sharply increased its consumption of iron ore and coal, said Macquarie's Jim Lennon, who noted prices for domestic coking coal in China have doubled in just 12 months.
With limited domestic reserves of premium grade hard coking coal, Chinese imports could rise to more five million tons next year from a current annualized rate of around two million tons.
This is a significant shift from recent years where China had largely been an exporter of hard coking coal.
Elsewhere, Japan's giant steel industry is enjoying a resurgence as it ramps- up production in response to strong Chinese demand for steel used in auto-making and construction.
Nippon Steel Corp., Japan's largest steel-maker, has won price increases of as much as 10% from domestic customers and is expected to install additional coking capacity to keep up with demand.
Other Japanese steel makers, including the nation's number two producer JFE Holdings Inc, are also demanding more hard coking coal at the expense of the lower quality semisoft coal.
"In terms of coke battery capacity, it's pretty much flat out all around the world," said Graham Wailes, a metallurgical coal analyst with AME Mineral Economics in Sydney.
"And therefore if you've got a coke oven, you are going to try and get the maximum output from it and to do that, you want to use the best quality coals," he said.
Japanese mills are on track to produce around 110 million tons of crude steel in 2003, up from 107.7 million tons last year.
But buoyant downstream conditions may not be enough to offset the impact of the sharp appreciation in Australian dollar given most fixed costs and labor is paid in domestic currency while sales are struck in U.S. dollars.
Since March 2003, this year's 4% U.S. benchmark price cut has translated to around a 20% Australian dollar price cut.
"Even if they got a 20% price increase, all they'd be doing is standing square where they were around about nine months ago," said Wailes of the Australian miners.
Representatives from Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Xstrata declined to comment while negotiations are continuing.
-By Eric Johnston; Dow Jones Newswires

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gesamter Thread:

• Sollte die Konjunktur anspringen dürfte Palladium viel Luft nach Norden haben. (owT) - Euklid, 09.12.2003, 08:33
  • Re:...Palladium viel Luft nach Norden... sowieso, weil Plat bei 800 (owT) - CRASH_GURU, 09.12.2003, 09:48
  • Re: Kohle, Stahl, Tantal - Bob, 09.12.2003, 11:34
    • Peter Scholl-Latour zur strategischen Bedeutung von Tantal - Helmut, 09.12.2003, 11:53
      • Re: Wie hängen Coltan, Tantal und Tantalit zusammen? - Bob, 09.12.2003, 12:34
        • Coltan = COLumbit + TANtalit (owT) - Helmut, 09.12.2003, 12:53
          • Link dazu: - Helmut, 09.12.2003, 13:03
  • Welche Konjunktur springt denn an? Die US-militärische, chinesische, polnische? - Heller, 09.12.2003, 12:47
  • Re: Sollte die Konjunktur anspringen dürfte Palladium viel Luft nach Norden haben. (owT) - herbie, 09.12.2003, 13:04