The Market of Silicon Manganese make Manganese Ore Decline

Ferro-alloys.com: This Wednesday ,HBIS made inquiry at  the 6650RMB/t  for silicon-manganese. Hebei iron and steel finally confirmed the bidding price in December for silicon-manganese at 6700 RMB/t based on delivery to Steel plant with long term payment, and bought 16000 tons. The price is same to the last month and the quantity increased 6070mt. Because the limitation of the steel production, HBIS purchased quantity of silicon-manganese was declined sharply in last month and also this month. In recent two months, the purchasing quantity declined about ave.by 50% .  That also concessed the policy that limiting the production of 50% to protect the environment in the north part of China. Up to now other steel plants have taken other action to the environment protect policy such as decreased the production but they did not decrease the silicon-manganese purchasing quantity so sharply as HBIS ddeduction.

We can predict that until to the March of 2018, steel plants in the north may decline their production about 30% which means the needs of silicon-manganese declined 35%. So in the north China, the supply balance will be broken and it has been broken. In this situation the lower price will be in favor for buyer to get order.  Now the market price is decided by the steel plants. The Manganese silicon price will based on 6700RMB/t in north part of China announced by HBIS and 6900RMB/t in the south part of China by Shagang Group.

As far as we know the price of the ferro-alloys in Ningxia is 6500 RMB/t Ex-Factory increased by 100RMB/t today and in Inner-Mongolia the price is 6400RMB/t. In the south part of China the price is 7000RMB/t which is stable. But compared with the 8225RMB/t the same time last year it declined 1525 RMB/t which is 18.5%. influenced by the spot market .The future market is increased these days but it did not change the spot market decline tendency. It is the first time that the price of future market is higher than the spot market.

Tshipi announced the price of December is 5.20-5.25 dollars/td which declined 0.30-0.25 dollars/dmtu， compared with the price in November. UMK has not announced the price .Comlog announced the price is 6.25 dollars/td which also declined.  The price of Gabon Mn43% small size is 6.05 dollars/td which declined 0.15 dollar /dmtu。

The manganese ore price of spot market is also declined 2-3RMB/dmtu， these days. Mn46% is 52-53 RMB/td in Tianjin Port. The price of last year at same period  was 90RMB/dmtu Compared with the price last year the price was declined by about 41%.

Ferro –alloys.com believes that the manganese ore price is un the pressure  to decline. According to the spot manganese ore price the cost of silicon manganese is about 6700-6800RMB/t. and according to the future manganese ore price the cost of the silicon manganese is about 6650-6750RMB/t. The sale price of silicon manganese right now is under the cost so plants have no profit which is unreasonable and plants do not  want to sell  their production which will increase the inventory of the silicon manganese.

The new supply balance cannot established the price of silicon manganese may go on decreding. The operation rate of manganese ore in Africa is 100% and the profit is decent but with the decline of silicon manganese  in the January of 2018, when we can see that the price of manganese ore will decline.

What is the future market of silicon manganese and the manganese ore?  Ferro-alloys.com will held a meeting on 5^th -7^th December 2017, which will present more researrch speeches on that, and  We welcome to see you there..

• [Editor:yuyunqing]