China’s aluminium ingot inventories continue downtrend posting 22,000 tonnes of fall over the weekend

According to the Shanghai Metals Market, China’s social inventories of primary aluminium across eight major consumption areas, including SHFE warrants, stood further down over the weekend by 22,000 tonnes as of Monday, April 3. Thus, SMM data showed the inventories totalled 1.066 million tonnes on April 3 compared to 1.088 million tonnes on Thursday, March 30.

On a week-on-week calculation, China’s aluminium ingot inventories on Monday shrank by 44,000 tonnes from 1.11 million tonnes, but up 10,000 tonnes a year ago.

As expected, the inventory maintained a downward trend, with smelters raising the share of molten aluminium output, resulting in lesser ingot output. To know more about the current status of primary aluminium ingot across China, refer to the chart below:

Wuxi recorded the highest primary aluminium inventory fall at the beginning of the week as more ingots were shipped to south China where prices were higher earlier, which pushed down stocks in Wuxi. According to SMM, 16,000 tonnes of aluminium ingot stocks fell in Wuxi, reaching 395,000 tonnes in total as of April 3.

In Nanhai, primary aluminium inventories dropped 3,000 tonnes over the weekend, coming in at 238,000 tonnes on April 3, and that in Gongyi and Chongqing dipped 2,000 tonnes to come in at 199,000 tonnes and 10,000 tonnes, respectively.

On the other hand, in Shanghai, primary aluminium inventories grew 1,000 tonnes to 53,000 tones, while the inventories in Tianjin and Linyi remained restrained at 74,000 tonnes and 29,000 tonnes, respectively.