Newman fines iron ore trades against Argus ICX

A cargo of Australia's Newman fines medium-grade iron ore traded on the Globalore screen today at a premium of $1.9/dry metric tonne to the December average of the Argus ICX 62pc seaborne fines price.

This is the first time the product has been traded or offered against the ICX, the price for 62pc Fe iron ore fines delivered to China.

The Newman fines offer was initially posted on the Globalore platform at around midday for a 90,000t shipment loading on 1-10 December.

Newman fines, produced by UK-Australian mining firm BHP, has been sold exclusively against a 62pc Fe iron ore index published by S&P Global Platts since index pricing began in 2010.

The ICX price was used as part of the pricing arrangement for Jimblebar Fines, another BHP product, until 2016.

The need for more diversity in price indexes has been a key topic of discussion in China's steel sector this year. The China iron and steel association (Cisa) in September publicly called for greater choice in the indexes against which Chinese mills purchase iron ore, even going as far as to instruct members to refuse contracts based on a single provider.

The ICX price underwent a methodology change in December 2017 and is now published as a volume-weighted average of the day's market activity, with greater weight given to concluded transactions and matched electronic trading platform bid/offer data.