BEIJING - Stainless steel futures on the Shanghai Futures Exchange inched higher on Wednesday, fuelled by a pick-up in raw material prices and downstream consumption.
"Due to the recent shutdown of some capacity in Inner Mongolia ... ferrochrome supplies dropped," GF Futures wrote in a note, explaining the price surge in the raw material used to manufacture stainless steel.
Downstream demand also recovered on increasing export orders, GF Futures said.
Nickel prices on the Shanghai bourse also jumped, ending the session with 3.2% gain.
The most-traded stainless steel futures contract, for March delivery, rose as much as 2.5% to 14,085 yuan ($2,181.49) a tonne. It closed up 1.2% at 13,910 yuan a tonne.
Other steel futures were mixed. Construction steel rebar for May delivery, dipped 0.3% to 4,293 yuan per tonne.
Hot-rolled coil, used in the manufacturing sector, inched 0.1% higher at close to 4,438 yuan a tonne.
FUNDAMENTALS
* Iron ore futures on the Dalian Commodity Exchange edged up 0.1% to 1,034 yuan per tonne.
* Spot prices of iron ore with 62% iron content for delivery to China rose by $0.5 to $171.5 per tonne on Tuesday, according to SteelHome consultancy.
* Dalian coking coal plunged 5.2% to 1,652 yuan.
* Coke DJcv1 declined 2.2% to 2,711 yuan a tonne.
* China's vehicle sales fell for a third consecutive year in 2020, but sales continued to rise in December as the country leads a recovery in the global automobile industry from the COVID-19 pandemic.
* German gas transmission system operator OGE, steel producer Thyssenkrupp and Norwegian energy company Equinor EGNR.OL on Tuesday said they would deepen cooperation to help cut carbon emissions from a Thyssenkrupp plant in Duisburg, Germany.
($1 = 6.4566 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Min Zhang and Shivani Singh, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Uttaresh.V) ((min.zhang@thomsonreuters.com; (8610) 5669-2105;))
