July 6 (Reuters) - China's first compromise on iron ore talks to embrace a flexible pricing system is drawing interest in fast-growing iron ore indices among miners, steel mills and traders to manage growing price risks.
Following are details of three iron ore indices gaining momentum in the burgeoning financial and physical iron ore market. ---------------------------------------------------------------- -- The Steel Index * Location: delivered CFR to Tianjin port in China.
* Frequency: Daily excluding UK bank holiday from June 1. (Before that, it issued weekly prices)
* Quality: Publishes two iron ore reference prices -- one for 62 percent Fe content fines and one for 58 percent Fe content fines.
* Data collection: Price data based on only actual transactions which are fed to its online systems, collected from more than 375 companies.
* Data calculation: It normalises data submitted to the reference product specifications and excludes outliers before calculating the average reference prices from the remaining normalised data.
* Lot size: Minimum 20,000 metric tonnes.
* Delivery period: Loading within 4 weeks of transaction.
* Unit: US$ per dry metric tonne.
Relevance: Used as a reference price for the world's first
cleared over-the-counter iron ore swaps contract launched
Singapore Exchange
* Frequency: Every Friday at 08:00 London time since the index was officially launched in October 2008. Plans to issue daily data soon.
* Quality: Base 62 pct Fe content, range 58 pct to 66 pct
* Data collection: Actual transactions, which are reported to Metal Bulletin by any market participant conducting trades on a CFR China spot basis. Data collected between Monday 8:00 Singapore time and Thursday 17:00 London time.
* Data calculation: Separates data into three sub-indices, based on a tonnage weighted average of the trade information. The final index is the non-weighted average of the three sub-indices and only the final index is published. It seeks to utilise at least 12 trades, or four for each sub-index, as a minimum to calculate the index.
* Lot size: Minimum 30,000 tonnes, maximum 350,000 tonnes.
* Delivery period: Within 8 weeks.
* Unit: US$ per dry metric tonne.
* Relevance: Used to settle OTC swaps that Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank launche in May 2008. --------------------------------------------------------------- -- PLATTS * Location: Delivered CFR main Chinese ports, normalised to Quingdao in North China.
* Frequency: Daily. Launched in June 2008.
* Quality: Iron ore fines with Fe content of 62 pct. Cargoes of grades with 60 and 63.5 pct Fe content will be normalised to the 62 pct standard, using a daily market determined value expressed in US$ per dry metric tonne for every one percent of FE content.
* Data collection: Data from actual transactions and/or bids and offers made in the market.
* Data calculation: Normalises outliers.
* Lot size: Minimum parcel size is 35,000 metric tonnes.
* Delivery period: Within 2-8 weeks from date of publication.
* Unit: US$ per dry metric tonne.
* Relevance: Used to settle OTC swaps that Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank launched in May 2008. (Reporting by Miyoung Kim in SEOUL)