SHANGHAI, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Chinese iron ore futures surged more than 4 percent on Thursday, driven by a broad rally in commodities, but the gains are expected to be unsustainable due to weak demand from top consumer China.
The benchmark May iron ore futures contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange DCIOcv1 closed about 1 percent higher at 307 yuan ($48.05) a tonne after climbing to a session high of 319 yuan.
Shanghai nickel futures surged nearly 6 percent amid expectations of production cuts, leading a broad-based rally in base metals after an early-week rout that pulled prices to multi-year lows. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL3N13L1CX
The rally driven by short-covering is expected to be temporary as demand for industrial metals in China remains shrinking and producers are still grappling with overcapacity.
"Iron ore prices will remain low due to an over-supplied seaborne market, driven by strong production growth in Australia and Brazil, and weak consumption growth in China," BMI Research, a Fitch Group company, said in a research note.
BMI expects prices to trade lower at $40-$50 a tonne in 2016 due to continued dollar strength, weak Chinese demand growth and strong production growth by the world's largest iron ore miners.
The most-traded rebar futures contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange SRBcv1 edged up 0.2 percent to 1,680 yuan a tonne.
Iron ore for immediate delivery to China's Tianjin port .IO62-CNI=SI stood unchanged at $43.40 a tonne on Wednesday, according to The Steel Index (TSI). It was the lowest price since TSI compiled indices in 2008.
Rebar and iron ore prices at 0700 GMT
Contract
Last
Change Pct Change SHFE REBAR MAY6
1680
+4.00
+0.24 DALIAN IRON ORE DCE DCIO MAY6
307
+3.00
+0.99 SGX IRON ORE FUTURES DEC
42.44
+0.09
+0.21 THE STEEL INDEX 62 PCT INDEX
43.4
+0.00
+0.00 METAL BULLETIN INDEX
44.07
+0.18
+0.41
Dalian iron ore and Shanghai rebar in yuan/tonne Index in dollars/tonne, show close for the previous trading day ($1 = 6.3896 Chinese yuan renminbi)