[July 31 SMM Zinc data]

As of April 15 Friday, SMM China copper inventory across major markets in China added 4,000 mt from Monday April 11 to 139,300 mt, down slightly by 1,000 mt from last Friday. The weekly inventory dropped again after a short increase last week. Compared with the domestic inventory recorded on Monday, the local stocks all added except for Shanghai during this period.

As of Friday, April 8, SMM copper inventory across mainstream regions in the country achieved the first weekly rise since March 4, with an increase of 3400 mt to 140300 mt compared with Wednesday April 6, and a slight increase of 2600 mt compared with last Friday.

The social inventory of lead ingots across Shanghai, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Tianjin dropped 3,200 mt from Friday March 11 and rose 9,800 mt from Monday March 7 to 119,000 mt as of March 14.

Intraday carbonate lithium prices recorded high ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday. The supply side was affected by the shutdown and maintenance of the upstream lithium salt manufacturers and the production reduction of the brine lake.

The SHFE nickel continued to rise strongly last week, as the LME and SHFE inventories both dropped to extremely low levels and are expected to keep falling.

The most active SHFE 2203 copper contract prices are expected to move between 69,900-72,000/mt this week, and LME copper will trade between $9,750-10,050/mt.

The European energy issues did not worsen last week, but the overall market bullishness remained.

The electricity prices fell to recent lows due to warmer temperature in Europe last week.

Some domestic NPI plants will remain in suspension in December, and the output NPI in December is expected to drop by about 8,000 mt (Ni content), including 5,000 mt (Ni content) of high-grade NPI.

Total zinc inventories across seven Chinese markets stood at 125,300 mt as of December 10, down 6,300 mt from December 6 and 4,800 mt from December 3.