New Orders Declined for Five Consecutive Weeks, Weekly Operating Rate Broke 80% [SMM Enamelled Wire Market Weekly Review]

This week (April 17–April 23), the enamelled wire industry's operating rates continued to weaken, with industry machine utilization rates down 3.07 percentage points WoW to 79.53%, and new orders falling 4.73 percentage points simultaneously. Affected by persistently weakening home appliance demand, orders for related enamelled wire enterprises were significantly under pressure. Coupled with copper prices fluctuating at highs, industry new orders and operating rates pulled back in tandem. Inventory side, downstream cargo pick-up pace slowed down, and some enterprises built up finished product inventories in advance to prepare for production shutdowns during the Labour Day holiday, with days of finished product inventories rebounding to 9.28 days. Overall, affected by multiple factors including declining end-use demand, new orders struggling to follow through after earlier concentrated orders had front-loaded future demand, and copper prices fluctuating at highs, the enamelled wire industry orders and operating rates continued to contract. SMM expects the enamelled wire industry machine utilization rate to continue to pull back to 78.4% next week.