Japanese buyers offered aluminium premium of $135 per tonne for April-June quarter

<p>As reported by Reuters, three major aluminium producers, South32 Ltd, Rio Tinto Ltd and UC Rusal have offered aluminium premium of $135 per tonne to Japanese buyers for shipments in the April to June quarter. According to sources from the pricing sector, this records a 42% increase from previous quarter. This offer would mark the second quarterly increase continuously. The increase is driven by rise in premiums in the United States and Europe and falling inventories Japan due to solid local demand.</p> <p><img style="vertical-align: middle; display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="http://www.alcircle.com/uploads/images/Aluminium-Ingot.jpg" alt="News" width="517" height="226" /></p> <p>Japan is Asia's biggest importer of aluminium and the premiums it agrees to pay each quarter for the delivery of primary metal over the London Metal Exchange (LME) price set the benchmark for the region.</p> <p>The negotiations for the current quarter began last month and are expected to continue through this month.</p> <p>"We've received offers at $135 per tonne from South 32 and Rio Tinto," says a source at an end-user in Japan.</p> <p>"Rusal has raised its offer to $135 per tonne this week from its previous offer of $125," he adds.</p> <p>The sources have also confirmed that Rusal made an indicative offer of a premium of $125 per tonne to Japanese buyers in February for April-June quarter. However, there have been no official announcements from the three producers.</p> <p>{googleAdsense}</p> <p>The sources from end-user says the premium of $135 is too high for them as there is no tightness in supply in the domestic market and are expecting premiums of around $120-125 per tonne.&nbsp; They feel the rise has been influenced by higher premiums in the U.S. and European market, where spot premiums have risen by about $20 to $50 per tonne over the past few months.</p> <p>According to trading house Marubeni Corp., aluminium stocks at three major Japanese ports fell slightly from the previous month to 273,100 tonnes at the end of January, but were down from 368,100 tonnes a year ago. For the January-March quarter, Japanese buyers mostly agreed to pay a premium of $95 per tonne, up 27% from the prior quarter.</p>