CNY to lower Feb operating rates at galvanising plants to 49%

Operating rates across licensed smelters of secondary lead in Jiangsu, Anhui, Henan and Guizhou stood at 61.11% this week, down 1.62% from the previous week, an SMM survey showed.

This is a roundup of China's metals weekly inventory as of July 2.

According to the latest air quality forecast results, the atmospheric diffusion conditions across the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and surrounding areas has deteriorated as the temperature rises.

An SMM survey showed that the average operating rate across Chinese galvanising plants fell 6.36 percentage points from a month ago to 93.57% in September. Nearly 31 galvanising plants were investigated, and the sample capacity of the survey stood at 10.8 million mt.

The galvanised iron tower sector is expected to give a significant boost to zinc consumption in 2020 as the construction of “new infrastructure” drives the commencement of a large number of ultra-high voltage power grid projects in the second half of the year.

It has been more than 3 months after China is hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, and restrictions on industrial activities and transportation were the harshest in February. During this period, SMM is continuously tracking market recovery on the metals market. Please see our detailed findings for the nonferrous metals sector below. We will keep you posted on the latest happenings via our website www.metal.com and our social media channels on Linkedin and Twitter. Please register for our webinars in March as we continue to connect you with the latest happening in the China ferrous and nonferrous metals market. The next session is happening on Wednesday March 18, 5pm CST, where we present to you a macro update of the resumption of metals industry as China recovers gradually from COVID-19 , with a deep-dive in the ferrous metals markets.

Most of major galvanising plants in China have reopened this week, and the operating rates increased sharply from last week.

Operating rates across Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hubei and Hebei averaged 55.21% in the week ended January 3

Operating rates across EAF steelmakers stood at 57% as of Oct 11, down 2 percentage points from the middle of Sep

The rate gained 1.23 percentage points from the prior week to stand at 53.06% in the week to Aug 16