China’s aluminium ingot inventories manifested downtrend in March’24 due to boosted activities in downstream sector

In tandem with the enthusiastic buying and selling activities of the aluminium downstream processing enterprises since the beginning of March, owing to the arrival of the traditional peak season, aluminium ingot inventories showed signs of decline at the end of March, as was predicted by SMM earlier.

However, due to the rally of Chinese domestic aluminium prices, primarily from the beginning of April, aluminium ingot destocking took a back seat. The downstream activities also slowed down during the three-day holiday for the Qingming Festival, which also inhibited aluminium ingot destocking.

The trend goes on

But the inventories only grew week-on-week in early April and remained low than the previous year. For instance, on April 8, SMM found the inventories across China’s eight major consumption areas at 863,000 tonnes, up by 16,000 tonnes W-o-W and down by 175,000 tonnes Y-o-Y. In fact, the figure was at the lowest compared to the same period of past seven years.

The annual downfall in inventories despite the limited outflow of stocks during the Qingming Festival was mainly due to the concentrated arrival of goods. After the import window closed in Shanghai, the supply of imported goods dropped to a low level.

According to SMM survey, the outflow of aluminium ingots from warehouses in the first week of April 2024 was 102,000 tonnes, down 4,900 tonnes week-on-week. Three factors that contributed to the downfall were – 1) higher consumption of imported goods and inventory decline in domestic bonded areas, 2) disinterest of downstream traders in purchasing ingots due to stupendous price hikes, and 3) downstream extrusion factories had a stronger desire to purchase aluminium billets than ingots.

Seek close monitoring

SMM believes that the arrival of aluminium ingots to remain low in April as the import window is closed and there is no hope of opening it. But domestic aluminium and aluminium billet companies have a certain amount of stocks on hand. Also, the buying sentiment among downstream traders may mellow down due to high prices, which could result in slow destocking of the metal. So, overall, market dynamics need to be closely monitored in terms of supply and demand in the downstream peak season.