By Amy Lv and Lewis Jackson
BEIJING (Reuters) -China’s iron ore imports in 2024 rose to a record high for a second year, customs data showed on Monday, as lower prices spurred buying while demand remained resilient due in large part to massive steel exports that are inflaming trade tensions.
The world’s largest iron ore consumer brought in a total of about 1.24 billion metric tons last year, data from the country’s General Administration of Customs showed, up 4.9% from 1.18 billion tons in 2023, when it posted an annual increase of 6.6%.
China’s iron ore imports are also likely to hit a record high in 2025 as traders stockpile cheap ore for the world’s top consumer, despite a protracted property crisis continuing to weigh on domestic steel demand.
Steel output slid by 2.7% from the year before in the first 11 months of 2024 and was on track for an annual decline, but that largely reflected weak output from electric furnace steelmakers, which supply the troubled construction sector and use scrap steel instead of iron ore as a resource.
Demand for iron ore remained solid among China’s blast furnace steelmakers, which have been able to maintain cost competitiveness.
Many electric furnace steelmakers, however, had to conduct maintenance or scale down production amid persistent constraints on scrap supply.
Additionally, traders that bought high-cost iron ore early last year continued purchasing the key steelmaking ingredient to average out their overall production costs and reduce losses, analysts said.
An increase in iron ore imports contributed to a price slump and a pile-up in portside stocks, which climbed by 28% year-on-year to 146.85 million tons as of Dec. 27, data from consultancy Steelhome showed.
China’s imported iron ore prices slid by 31% last year, according to Steelhome data.
In December alone, China imported 112.49 million tons of iron ore, up 10.4% from 101.86 million tons in November.
The December volume compared to 100.86 million tons in the same month in 2023.
China’s steel exports hit a nine-year high of 110.72 million tons in 2024, up 22.7% from 2023, stoking global trade tensions.
A number of countries, including Turkey and Indonesia, have imposed anti-dumping duties, arguing that a flood of cheap Chinese steel is hurting domestic manufacturers.
China exported 9.73 million tons of steel products in December, up 25.9% year-on-year and 4.9% month-on-month.
China also imported 621,000 tons of steel in December, bringing the 2024 total to 6.82 million tons, a fall of 10.9% from 2023.
(Reporting by Amy Lv and Lewis Jackson in Beijing; Editing by Michael Perry, Kim Coghill and Edmund Klamann)
