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BEIJING — China’s Baoshan Iron & Steel Co Ltd, the listed arm of the country’s biggest steel producer China Baowu Steel Group, has completed its first iron ore deal settled in Chinese currency with Brazil’s Vale SA.

China, the world’s biggest iron ore consumer, has been trying to increase its influence over pricing of the steelmaking ingredient to help its steel mills weather market fluctuations.

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The purchase, worth about 330 million yuan ($47.33 million) and completed last month, is part of Baosteel’s long-term contract with the leading Brazilian iron ore miner, a Baowu statement said on Thursday.

It did not disclose the grade of iron ore or how much tonnage it had bought.

Baosteel has been promoting the yuan-denominated settlement of iron ore trade with foreign suppliers since 2019 and has done import deals with countries, including South Africa and Ukraine, for about 240 million yuan in total, the statement said.

Last month, China’s second-largest steelmaker HBIS Group also announced that it had secured a combined 200 million yuan worth of iron ore deals with Vale denominated in Yuan. ($1 = 6.9724 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Min Zhang and Shivani Singh; editing by Barbara Lewis)