It seems that the world three big iron ore miners are teaching the Chinese steel mills and traders a lesson in marketing, depriving them of their profits by raising the prices of the mineral by nearly 100% this year.
Even as China cries foul over the Anglo Australian miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto and Vale of Brazil for junking the annual benchmark price in favour of quarterly ones and raising iron ore prices by nearly 100% the country has to look inwards and first discipline its steel industry and iron ore traders.
In the run up to the iron ore negotiations starting in February, China has been repeatedly saying that it has curtailed imports so that it can bargain with the miners from a position of strength to force them to not raise iron ore prices by more than 40%.
The latest statistics released by the General Administration of Customs revealed that but its own latest statistics show exactly the opposite. Instead of reducing its imports, in the first quarter of 2010, China imported 155 million tonnes of iron ore up by 18% from the same period last year.
Not only did the iron ore imports increase during the quarter, the total value of the iron ore imports was a record USD 14.93 billion up by 42.4%YoY compared to the same period last year.