The China Solid Waste and Chemicals Management Bureau, a unit of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, granted import allowances for 10,423 mt of high-grade copper scrap to 14 companies in the latest release, bringing the cumulative quotas for this year to 540,184 mt.

Jiangsu Tafel New Energy Technology on May 17 kicked off construction of its phase II and III capacity of a power battery project, which is located at the Jiangning Development Zone, Nanjing.  

Prices of most light and medium-to-heavy rare earth oxides increased last week as sellers firmed up offers on active enquiries by downstream consumers. SMM expects the improvement in enquiries to continue to support prices of medium-to-heavy rare earth oxides this week, while prices of light rare earth, such as praseodymium-neodymium oxide, will likely pull back as the strength of demand may unable to sustain a price rally. 

Prices of Chinese cobalt products may slow their downside trend in the short term as uncertainties around raw materials imports remain even as top supplier South Africa has eased coronavirus lockdown measures to level 4 which allowed freight transport to resume. 

Copper scrap supply in China is estimated to have shrunk nearly 200,000 mt in the first three months of 2020, as escalated virus-control measures disrupted global trade flows and as Chinese suppliers held back on sales following a slump in copper prices. A total of 225,083 mt of copper scrap was imported to China in January-to-March, down close to 140,000 mt, or more than 38% from the same period last year, according to data from China customs. SMM estimates that those copper scrap imports, with average Cu content of 78.49%, contained 176,676 mt of copper, down more than 37% from the quarter ended March 2019.

Prices of ternary materials and precursors in China will see further downside risk before May as inventories continued to pile up, driven by slowed or delayed purchases by downstream producers of power batteries amid falling orders. 

Chinese power battery recycling giant GEM will team up with South Korean cathode materials manufacturer EcoPro to produce high-nickel ternary precursor products for electric vehicle batteries. GEM said on Monday April 13 that its subsidiary Fuan Qingmei Energy Materials Co., Ltd. has penned a memorandum of understanding with EcoPro to establish a joint venture (JV) in Ningde, in South China’s Fujian province.

SMM surveyed 41 major aluminium processors in 12 provinces and found that their average operating rate dipped 0.6 percentage point on a weekly basis to 74.4% last week.

China's production of ternary precursor, which is used to produce ternary materials for power and digital batteries, rebounded 66.4% from a month ago due to the recovery of operations and logistics after the effective containment of COVID-19 in China.

The global widespread of COVID-19 has forced many countries to enforce stringent containment measures which result in a heavy impact on global economic activity. Over the past few months, we saw serious disruption of manpower, transportation and production in China. We are now seeing these scenarios happening around the world.