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

SMM China lead ingot inventory across five major markets totalled 99,800 mt as of Friday April 8, up 400 mt from last Friday April 1 and 500 mt from Wednesday April 6.

The total inventory of HRC across social warehouses and steel makers in China stood at 3.58 million mt as of April 7, up 28,300 mt or 0.8% on the week, a decrease of 0.39% on the year.

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%.

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.

In terms of SHFE zinc prices, the market should be concerned about zinc concentrate, which is still short of supply.

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%.

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 upstream supply of rare earths continued to be tight. In terms of ore imports, the enterprises in south China are more dependent on ores imported from Myanmar. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic situation in Myanmar has been worrying, the ore traders were pessimistic about the re-opening of the China-Myanmar boarder port in the first quarter of 2022, and they were less interest in selling rare earth ores from Myanmar.