Market

Iron ore prices have soared to a nine-year high driven by strong government stimulus measures in China and constrained Brazilian supply, but the elevated prices seem to have a limited effect in pushing miners to increase supplies due to many factors. Our data shows that, in 2020, seaborne iron ore exports to all countries increased 3.2% to 1,574 Mt. The top four iron ore producers (Rio Tinto, Vale, BHP and FMG), which account for 69.7% of the global seaborne market share in 2020, had their total exports almost flat in both Q4(288.2 Mt) and the past year(1098 Mt).