At the end of the latest offshore session, benchmark iron ore for immediate delivery to the port of Tianjin in China was trading at $62.80 a tonne, down 0.8 per cent from its previous close of $63.30 a tonne. The price is now at its weakest point since the middle of 2009. It has now lost 11 per cent of its value since January 1 after suffering a 47 per cent decline in 2014.
The raw material has been in a bear market since March after Rio Tinto Group, BHP Billiton Ltd. and Vale SA spent billions of dollars to boost low-cost output even as China slowed. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. joined global banks on Friday in cutting price forecasts for 2015, predicting a return to a bull market is probably more than a decade away. The love affair between China and iron ore is cooling, the bank said.
