Australia iron ore export grew 10% in Q3 y-o-y

December 10 MetalBiz--According to the statistics data from Australian Bureau of Agricultural&Resource Economics (ABARE), till September 30 of 2009, with the Asia market recover continuously, Australia exported ore of 98mln tons in Q3, up 10% year on year, but under the impact of lower agreement price, the export volume dropped 26% year on year.

Analysts believed that although the Australian ore agreement price of 2009 represented by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton was down 33%-44%, signals showed that the agreement price would pull back by 30% next year.

Data also indicated that Australia nickel ore production decreased 23% in Q3 year on year, reaching to 40,000 tons, which attributed to the significant slump of nickel ore price in the end of 2008 to the early of 2009 and most nickel mines still maintain the state of free-production now. It is estimated that the affected nickel ore production was about 40,000 tons.