
According to the data released by the General Administration of Customs on Friday, November 23, China’s October alumina exports exceeded 460,000 tonnes and reached the highest since at least October 2014. The reason because Chinese producers of the aluminium raw material continued to cash in as much as possible on the global shortage.

The customs data also shows that China so far in 2018 has exported just under 1 million tonnes of alumina.
China’s alumina exports in October alone surpassed the volume shipped across the last three calendar years 2015, 2016, and 2017 in total.
Shortages in the global markets were due to an outage at Norsk Hydro’s Alunorte refinery in Brazil and then a strike at Alcoa’s alumina operations in Western Australia amidst the US sanctions against the UC Rusal.
The growth in international spot alumina prices by more than 30 per cent in Q3 2018 was also a reason for China’s October alumina export growth.
Jackie Wang, an analyst at consultancy CRU in Beijing, was of opinion that delayed exports from September, with the August figure just below 30,000 tonnes coming in well below expectations likely spurred the export volume for October.
The arbitrage to export Chinese alumina to the international market was “very attractive” last month, she said.
As far as the import was concerned, China procured around 50,000 tonnes in October, the customs data showed, up from 30,000 tonnes in September.
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