MELBOURNE (Commodity Online) : One of the world's leading miner, BHP Billiton has hugely hiked iron ore price for some of its Asian customers for second quarter in 2010.

According to sources, BHP has managed to secure a 99.7 per cent price hike for iron ore, up from the $60-a-tonne price settled through the annual contract system for 2009-10.

BHP Billiton has secured 99.7 per cent rise over 2009 prices or $120.08 a tone for Pilbara fines iron ore.

The hike is 9.7 per cent more than the 90 per cent hike that Vale of Brazil secured from Japanese steel mills last week.

The landed price for BHP's iron ore to Japan would be approximately $131.50 per tone after taking freight charges into account, which is still 22 per cent below the current spot market price.

world's third-largest iron ore miner said last month that it had reached agreement with a significant number of customers throughout Asia to move existing iron ore contracts that were previously priced annually onto a shorter term landed price equivalent basis.

The miner also said that the agreements reached were for a majority of its iron ore sales volume although it did not reveal the price of the settlements

Japan Price