MILLIONS of tonnes of ore still sit in stockpiles on the wharves of China’s biggest iron-ore port Rizhao.
As the queues of ships waiting to load in Australia have dwindled, about China's ports up to 75 ships, many carrying Australian ore, are waiting to dock and offload on to already choked stockpiles.
Almost 7.2 million tonnes of ore was stocked at the port at the end of last month, a 200,000-tonne increase on a week earlier.
Xiong Weiping, the president of China's state-owned aluminium giant, Chinalco, gave a dour short-term forecast for commodities markets, saying that there was no bottom seen yet in regards to the global economic situation.
Xiong aims to smooth the path for Chinalco's $US19.5 billion (A$30.7 billion) bid for 18.8% of Rio, which would give the Chinese government-backed company a big stake in Australia's biggest resource assets.
In response to the slowing demand, iron-ore spot prices last week had their biggest drop since October, while iron-ore freight rates slumped 15-20 per cent.
Analysts said the outlook for Chinese growth had changed for the worse in the past two weeks. After a period of steel mill destocking late last year, followed by a period of restocking this year, a truer picture of demand was emerging.
Experts reported that 75 iron-ore ships were waiting fully laden at anchor in China, up from 55 at the
start of February, and the highest in more than two years.
He said the fact that high port queues, indicating low availability of ships, had not buoyed freight rates was far from encouraging.
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