Chinese spot alumina prices edged down slightly but remained stable overall during the week of August 8-14, as inventories continued to build while limited spot alumina availability provided some support, Mysteel Global learned.
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According to Mysteel's price assessment, the national average price for smelter-grade alumina with purity exceeding 98.6 per cent slid by a marginal 0.2 per cent from a week earlier to RMB 3,262 per tonne (USD 454 per tonne) as of August 14.
During the same period, China's alumina inventories continued to mount. Mysteel's latest survey showed that total alumina stocks at the ten major Chinese ports, 44 alumina refiners, 89 primary aluminium smelters, and rail yards or in transit had increased by 1.3 per cent from August 7 to reach 4.2 million tonnes by August 14, the highest level in 14 months.
The climb in stocks was primarily led by smelters, whose alumina inventories climbed by 1.6 per cent on week to 3 million tonnes, according to the survey.
Despite the mounting inventories, spot alumina prices faced only limited downward pressure last week. Restricted availability in the spot market was mainly behind the price resilience, according to market insiders.
On the one hand, to generate receipts last week, some alumina producers redirected spot cargoes to delivery warehouses registered with the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE), which reduced the volume of spot alumina circulating in the spot market. The SHFE's data showed that alumina receipts at its registered warehouses had surged by 135.3 per cent on a week to 51,671 tonnes by August 14.
In addition, some producers focused on fulfilling long-term contracts amid stable alumina demand from primary smelters, with the recent growth in resumption-driven output of alumina mostly absorbed by smelters to build up their raw material inventories, market sources suggested.
On the production side, alumina output among the 44 refiners sampled in the survey totalled 1.85 million tonnes during August 8-14, down by 0.1 per cent from the prior week. This marked the first production decline in nearly two months, reflecting generally stable operations at most alumina producers, with few reports of makers either lifting or lowering output.
Specifically, one 2.4 million tonnes per year refiner in Jiaokou county, Shanxi province, had cut its production by around 1,500 tonnes per day for about two weeks, as reported.
Note: This article has been issued by MYSTEEL and has been published by AL Circle with its original information without any modifications or edits to the core subject/data.
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