Iron Ore Lumps & Pellets

Direct-charge lump and blast-furnace / DR-grade pellets by Fe, tumble index and CCS

Lump and pellets are the ore a furnace can charge without sintering, and that is what the premium over fines buys. Lump (6–40 mm, or 10–40 mm for stricter burdens) is bought on Fe (60–64%), silica, alumina and phosphorus like fines, plus two mechanical numbers: a decrepitation index, because a lump that shatters when it hits the furnace heat becomes fines in the wrong place, and a fines fraction below 6.3 mm at discharge, which is why it is bought on a dry, screened basis and re-screened at the receiving end. Pellets (9–16 mm, 63–67% Fe) are a manufactured product and carry a manufactured specification: cold compression strength (CCS, ≥ 250 daN per pellet for blast-furnace grade, higher for direct reduction), tumble index (≥ 94% above 6.3 mm) and abrasion index (≤ 5% below 0.5 mm), reducibility, swelling index and, for DR-grade pellets, a silica-plus-alumina ceiling of about 2–3% and Fe of 67% or better because a direct-reduction shaft has no slag to hide gangue in. Basicity (CaO/SiO₂) is written for fluxed pellets. UN Comtrade 2025 export declarations under HS 2601 put Oman at 10.7 million MT at an average USD 137/MT — the highest declared value among the second-tier origins and consistent with a pellet-weighted book out of Sohar — against South Africa at USD 93/MT and Canada at USD 98/MT across their mixed lump, fines and pellet books, and Malaysia at USD 59/MT for a fines-weighted one. The spread between USD 59 and USD 137 is the spread between sinter feed and a pellet the furnace can charge as it arrives; pellets are priced as the 62% Fe CFR China index plus a pellet premium, and lump as the index plus a lump premium, both moving with the sinter-plant economics of the buyer.

The buyer of lump is a blast furnace that wants to lift its direct-charge ratio and cut sinter cost; the buyer of blast-furnace pellets is the same furnace, or a mill without a sinter plant; the buyer of DR-grade pellets is a direct-reduction plant in the Gulf, India or Southeast Asia, and that last buyer is the strictest of the three. CBIL is a commodity brokerage company and brokers lump and pellets from South African, Canadian, Omani, Indian and Kazakh miners and pellet plants and trader positions against SGS, Intertek or Bureau Veritas certification of chemistry, size distribution, CCS, tumble and abrasion indices and moisture, sampled at the load port to ISO 3082 with the load-port certificate governing. Lump is worked in Supramax and Panamax lots; pellets in Panamax and Capesize out of Sohar, Saldanha and the Canadian Atlantic terminals, and pellets are handled with the same care as fines because a pellet cargo fractured in loading is a fines cargo on arrival. Because CBIL also runs a chartering desk (LaycanDesk), the freight leg is quoted alongside the cargo on FOB and CFR terms. Send your CCS and tumble floors, silica-plus-alumina ceiling and whether the pellet is for a blast furnace or a direct-reduction shaft, and we will work the plant to it.

Need the ship as well? Our chartering desk prices bulk ore and metallics freight on LaycanDesk.