Iron ore shipment up 169% at 12 major ports in Apr-Jan

The Dollar Business Bureau

The shipments of iron ore handled by India’s 12 major ports increased 169% to 38.61 million tonnes in the period April-January of the current financial year.

The state-owned ports had managed 14.37 million tonnes of the key raw material used in steel-making in the same period of the previous fiscal.

In its latest report, the Indian Ports Association (IPA), which keeps data of cargo handled by the major 12 ports, said that “percentage variation from previous year” in handling iron ore  was as high as 168.59% in the initial ten-month period of this financial year.

Mining major, Vedanta, had said recently that the worst phase of the local iron ore industry is now over and showed confidence that the company’s Goa subsidiary is prepared to withstand the export momentum in the wake of softening prices globally and subdued demand.

Last month, an arm of Fitch had said that India’s iron ore production is estimated to grow to 185 million tonnes in the coming four years.

“We forecast India's iron ore output to grow from 136 million tonnes in 2017 to 185 million tonnes in 2021,” said BMI Research, a unit of Fitch Group.

Earlier, the iron ore production had taken a downward spiral with an average decline of 9.4% y-o-y during 2012-2016 after the ban on mining in three biggest iron-ore producing states Karnataka, Odisha and Goa.

As per the IPA, handling of iron ore surged to 11.18 million tonnes at Mormugao Port in the ten-month period compared to 2.29 million tonnes in the year-ago period whereas Visakhapatnam Port handled 9.17 million tonnes compared to 4.39 million tonnes a year-ago.

Iron ore cargo in Paradip Port surged to 8.51 million tonnes compared to 2.27 million tonnes during the corresponding period in the previous year.

The country’s 12 major ports - Mumbai, Kandla, JNPT, New Mangalore, Marmugao, Chennai, Cochin, Ennore, Visakhapatnam, V O Chidambarnar, Kolkata (including Haldia) and Paradip - handle around 61% of the overall cargo traffic.