Affected by epidemic outbreak, the president recently announced an emergency to the whole nation and said 35 ports and 2 offshore ports will be closed, including the Saldanha port, the largest shipping ports of iron ore in South Africa. It is known that the lockdown is only aimed at optional flow to crews and passenger ships and haven’t caused any effect on iron ore shipments at present.

While at the futures markets, some traders are still expecting price up and are not going to sell, and such uncertainty of iron ore supplies formed strong support to the iron ore price.

According to SMM tracking data, there are totally 90 ships to main ports of China during March 8-March 14. The cargo of arrival is estimated to be 12.1 million tons, increased by 400 thousand tons than last week and 1.6 million tons than same period last year. The iron ore out of Australia last week decreased by 1.37 million tons to 15.76 mt, the iron ore out of Brazil this week increased by 560 thousand tons to 3.51 million tons.