India: MOIL lowers manganese ore prices for all grades in September 2024

MOIL, India's leading manganese ore producer, announced new prices starting September 1, 2024. Manganese ore with grades above 44% saw a 20% price reduction, while grades below 44%, including SMGR and fines, experienced a 15% decrease.

Factors impacting prices:

Imported manganese ore offers to India at 6-month lows: Imported manganese ore offers to India hit six-month lows in August 2024. Offers for the benchmark Mn37% lumps from South Africa to India fell to $4/dmtu, the lowest since end-February 2024. The high-grade imported Mn ore is hovering at over-three-month lows of $6.2-6.65/dmtu. Since imported ore provides a direction for domestic pricing, a downward pressure is expected next month.

Global miners lower Mn ore offers in Aug: Global miners like United Manganese of Kalahari (UMK) and Jupiter Mines Limited operating the Tshipi Borwa mine in South Africa, decreased their August shipment offers. UMK lowered its 36% grade semi-carbonate lump price by $2.4/dmtu m-o-m to $3.80/dmtu CIF China.

Jupiter Mines, meanwhile, set its August CIF China prices of the high-grade 36.5% semi-carbonate lump at $3.9/dmtu, a significant fall from last month's $6.3/dmtu. The manganese ore is sourced from its Tshipi Borwa mine in the Kalahari fields.

Eramet Comilog lowered its September 2024 prices of Gabonese grade Mn44.5% to around $6/dmtu CNF China, while the Gabonese chip fell to around 5.80/dmtu CNF China, both down over 30% m-o-m. However, the latter could not be confirmed till the time of publishing the report.

The price falls across miners can be attributed to declined demand from manganese alloys smelters globally amid the subdued demand for steel.

Higher inventories weigh down Chinese manganese ore prices: The production cuts under way in China, amid falling demand for finished steel, has negatively impacted manganese alloys smelters. This scenario, in turn, has shrunk the demand for manganese ore, resulting in a pile-up of ore stocks at Chinese ports.

Demand for silico manganese in China has decreased, affected by the reduction in steel production. Weekly demand for the material has cumulatively fallen for eight consecutive weeks by 19%, and y-o-y, by 22%.

Weaker manganese alloys market sentiments in India: Domestic silico manganese prices in India are hovering at a four-month low. The benchmark SiMn 60-14 from Raipur is hovering at around INR 68,400/t. These levels were last seen in early April 2024. One key reason for the drastic fall in prices is the decline in exports of silico manganese. Around 50% of the total domestic manganese alloys production gets exported. Thus, a dull overseas market has obviously weakened domestic prices.