Prices and trading activity in the iron ore market softened again on Wednesday March 28 despite some improvement in China's steel market.
Key driversThe Chinese ferrous futures market was mixed during the day, with the most-traded steel contracts closing slightly higher than the preceding day's settlement prices, while the benchmark contracts for steelmaking raw materials all ended in negative territory.The country's spot rebar and hot-rolled coil prices rose 10-30 yuan ($1.60-4.80) per tonne.These gains could have been due to talk in the market that mills in Wu'an city - a major steelmaking city in north China - are being asked to implement "normalized" production cuts of 40-50% during the April-September period.There...