Chinese vanadium prices move higher amid increased activity
Date: Jan 17, 2019
Chinese ferro-vanadium export prices saw an uptick in the pricing week ended Thursday January 10 amid a comparatively active market as many overseas buyers returned to the market after their year-end holiday break.
Fastmarkets’ assessment for ferro-vanadium, fob China, was at $69-72 per kg on January 10, up 1.8% from $68.50-70.00 per kg the week before.
China’s ferro-vanadium export market saw a considerable number of enquiries received from overseas markets in the past week, indicating a return of buying interest, market sources said.
“The [ferro-vanadium export] market has been quite active this week. We received many enquiries from the overseas market and we managed to conclude deals at around $70 per kg,” a Chinese ferro-vanadium producer said on January 10.
Some Chinese ferro-vanadium exporters, however, pulled away from offering due to the lack of available material despite the large number of enquiries from overseas customers, according to sources.
“We did not offer [last week], not because we don’t want to but because we do not have any more available material as what we have at hand needs to be sent to our customers who had placed orders with us earlier,” a Chinese ferro-vanadium trader said.
“We stopped offering after having sold out our stocks at the beginning of the week, as we have no more available material and we are finding it hard to source vanadium pentoxide at the moment,” a second Chinese ferro-vanadium producer said.
The Chinese ferro-vanadium market has seen in lack of available spot cargoes as many domestic ferro-vanadium suppliers either cut or suspended their production when they began to suffer losses due to the significant decline in the ferro-vanadium prices from the end of November, 2018. That decline came after Chinese market participants noticed that the tightened government-mandated standards on steel rebar that came into effect on November 1, 2018 were as not stringent as expected.
