The new tax law still worries the outlook for Zambia's copper production growth of 8.6 per cent in the first nine months of 2018

China produced 848,500 mt of copper cathode in March, up 8.42% MoM and down 5.79% YoY, according to SMM statistics.

Last week, the US Fed announced that it may begin to shrink the balance sheet at the next meeting in May. The pace will be accelerated to a monthly reduction of $95 billion.

Domestic new secondary aluminium capacity stood at 1.85 million mt in 2021, including 1.17 million mt of secondary aluminium casting alloy, and the total installed capacity amounted to 11.96 million mt, according to SMM statistics.

China’s lithium carbonate output was 18,609 mt in February, a month-on-month decrease of 2% but a year-on-year increase of 51%.

As an important anode material for lithium batteries, copper foil is in short supply due to the continuously booming new energy industry, and the conversion margins are at a high level. Many well-known domestic companies have begun to deploy in the copper foil industry.

Li Xinchuang, secretary of the party committee of the Metallurgical Industry Planning Research Institute and vice president of the China Iron and Steel Industry Association, said that from the recent response from industry participants, the crude steel production regulation policy is likely to continue in 2022.

According to the media, the existing capacity, after taking in all the disclosed production expansion projects, has reached 5 million mt, an obvious surpass over the downstream demand by 2025.

According to SMM survey, the operating rates of magnesium powder plants were suppressed under the impact of Beijing Winter Olympics. Some plants in Tianjin and Shanxi cut the production, and the overall output declined by 30%.

China’s rare earth mining and smelting/separation quotas stood at 168,000 mt and 162,000 mt respectively in 2021, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

SMM data shows that domestic polysilicon output stood at 42,800 mt in November, an increase of 5.9% month on month and 20.2% year on year.