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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Rio Tinto sets July-Sept iron ore prices for China steel mills -sources

Thu Jun 23, 2011

SHANGHAI, June 23 (Reuters) - World No.2 iron ore miner Rio Tinto Ltd has asked some Chinese steel mills to pay $2.7234 per dry metric tonne for iron ore fines and $3.0109 per dry metric tonne unit for lump ore for the July-September period, sources familiar with the situation told Reuters.

An iron ore buying official at a mid-sized steel mill in northern China said the company had received the pricing details from Rio Tinto on Tuesday.

Another market source familiar with steel mills said a few more steel mills in eastern China had received notice of the same pricing details.

Vale SA , Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton Ltd last year scrapped a 40-year-old system for pricing iron ore contracts annually in favour of an index-based quarterly pricing mechanism to capture sharp swings in spot prices.

Prices for quarterly contracts are largely based on average index prices over a three-month period ending a month before the start of each quarter.

The mill official said the company had not yet received a price notice from Vale. (Reporting by Ruby Lian and Jacqueline Wong; Editing by Chris Lewis, Thomson Reuters)

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