Commentary on Political Economy

Wednesday 16 December 2020

FOR THIS STORY, YOU WOULD ALMOST UNCORK A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE !

 

Schadenfreude as Chinese steel mills ask for help from Rio and BHP

There would be an element of schadenfreude within BHP as China’s steel mills send signals of distress in response to the soaring price of iron ore.

BHP is the world’s biggest seaborne metallurgical coal producer but China’s so-far-unofficial ban on Australian coal has left Australian coal carriers stranded in China’s ports, unable to unload and the price of Australian coal has plummeted.

The price of iron ore has surged in 2020.

The price of iron ore has surged in 2020.CREDIT:BLOOMBERG

No doubt, when BHP iron ore marketing executives were summoned to a video call with the China Iron and Steel Association last week, they made the right sympathetic noises about the near-70 per cent increase in iron ore prices this year but, given the backdrop of the widespread Chinese trade sanctions on Australian products and on their own coal exports, one suspects it wouldn’t have been heartfelt.

It isn’t clear what CISA expects the Australian producers to do about prices that have soared from less than $US90 a tonne at the start of this year to more than $US150 a tonne, which has more than offset the impact of the bans on coal, barley, wine, lobsters and lamb on Australia’s exports to China.

There was a ripple of concern, and some bemusement, in mining circles when CISA, according to Reuters, said on Wednesday that Rio Tinto, similarly summoned to talks, had committed to working with the mills to review the pricing mechanism for iron ore, which CISA vice-chairman Luo Tiejun described as “unreasonable” and “not conducive to the long term healthy development of upstream and downstream” sectors of the industry.

Rio responded to the report by issuing its own very diplomatic, but rather meaningless, statement.

“Rio Tinto is continuously working with customers, suppliers and industry stakeholders to improve our products and services to meet evolving customer needs as well as to ensure major markets, including iron ore, are open, liquid and transparent, which benefits all market participants,” it said.

It is understandable that the mills aren’t happy with the spike in prices even as their other big input cost – coal – has soared as a result of their own government’s actions in cutting off their supplies of Australian coal.

They are having to substitute domestic coal and coal sourced from other countries that is nearly twice as expensive and of lower quality than the Australian product. With the elevated iron ore prices they are experiencing an intense margin squeeze. Trade wars, as the US discovered, are mutually destructive.

While the iron ore producers might make polite motherhood statements of their commitment to their customers and to liquid and transparent markets – and the iron or market, where the price is based on indices that reflect actual customer transactions, is transparent and illiquid – there is no way, given their historical experiences, that the Australian miners would contemplate any material change to the way their commodity is priced.

The producers aren’t going to walk away from the current pricing mechanism or gift the mills material discounts to alleviate the pressure on the mills’ margins created by the effects of the stimulus program and China’s self-harming ban on Australian coal.

Until a decade ago seaborne iron ore had been priced through annual negotiations between the big producers – Rio, BHP and Brazil’s Vale – and the Chinese mills, echoing the way the price had been set with Japan’s mills for more than 40 years.

It was former BHP chief executive, Marius Kloppers, who transformed the way iron ore was priced.

From about 2005, Kloppers had advocated a shift to market-clearing prices for bulk commodities like coal and iron ore to replace the annual, protracted, negotiations with the Japanese and Chinese mills, where the producers were inevitably played off against each other.

He said BHP would produce at capacity and accept whatever the market price – at the time indices of iron ore prices were just emerging - might be. In 2010 BHP shifted most of its Chinese customers over to market pricing.

Rio and Vale were initially reluctant to follow suit but the Chinese mills forced their hand. Where the Japanese had always honoured their contracts the Chinese mills, when the spot price fell below their contract price, reneged on the contracts to get access to the lower prices.

Australian coal carriers stranded in China’s ports, unable to unload and the price of Australian coal has plummeted.

Australian coal carriers stranded in China’s ports, unable to unload and the price of Australian coal has plummeted.CREDIT:PETER BRAIG

Confronted with the “heads we win, tails you lose” stance of the mills, Vale and subsequently Rio joined BHP in adopting market-related pricing and the contract system disappeared.

Unless Rio’s corporate memory has completely failed, which it hasn’t, there will be no turning back and any changes to the current pricing mechanism will be tinkering rather than structural.

The problem confronting the mills is that the prices do reflect the fundamentals of supply and demand.

On the supply side – and the three Australia producers, Rio, BHP and Fortescue supply more than 60 per cent of the mill’s demand – there have been some constraints.

Vale is still recovering from its tailing dam failures and has also experienced weather events that have seen its production fall short of its own forecasts.

The Pilbara miners are implementing pre-cyclone season maintenance, which has a modest impact on their production volumes, but are otherwise producing as much ore as they can and, subject to the weather, will continue to do so.

The mills can blame their own government for the demand-side issues. China’s response to the pandemic centred on stimulating infrastructure investment, which is steel-intensive. The mills are producing at near-record rates - which means that their demand for iron ore is at near-record levels.

Given the stimulus-inflated demand, which has seen iron ore imports running at double–digit rates above those in 2019, along with Vale’s production shortfalls and thin inventories at the ports, it isn’t surprising that the price has spiked.

That’s the way markets work. The mills didn’t complain – and nor did the miners -- when, in 2016, the price fell below $US40 a tonne as supply overwhelmed demand.

While there is speculative activity in iron ore, via trading in iron ore futures on the Dalian and Singapore exchanges, the prices the miners are receiving are not unprecedented.

During the last, and far bigger, bout of infrastructure-based stimulus in response to the financial crisis the price neared $US200 a tonne.

Contrary to the mills assertion, the pricing mechanism hasn’t failed but reflects actual market conditions and CISA’s calls for China’s regulators to investigate the price and “severely crack down on possible violations of laws and regulations” are therefore misconceived and could backfire.

The producers aren’t going to walk away from the current pricing mechanism or gift the mills material discounts to alleviate the pressure on the mills’ margins created by the effects of the stimulus program and China’s self-harming ban on Australian coal.

Any attempt to “crack down” on them could adversely impact supply, send the price roaring even higher and ravage the mills’ profitability even further.

No comments:

Post a Comment