Silicon social inventories rose on smaller deliveries

[SMM Weekly Review: Polysilicon Sees Small Volume of High-Price Deals; Centralized Module Price Decline Widens] This week, China's module prices showed structural divergence, with distributed modules stopping falling and stabilizing while centralized modules saw a wider decline. On the distributed side, enterprise guidance prices remained unchanged, and average transaction prices for all specifications stayed basically flat this week, with only HJT modules edging down 0.0005 yuan/W. Supported by costs and industry self-discipline, module prices do not have much room for a sharp decline and are expected to consolidate in the short term. However, it is worth noting that low-efficiency modules have recently begun shipping rapidly, which to some extent affects the ability of conventional modules to hold prices firm. On the centralized demand side, marginal improvement continued: recent deliveries kept increasing, tenders for some large projects moved forward, and installations and orders both grew. Nevertheless, prices still lacked upward momentum, and the decline for the three specifications actually widened to 0.004 yuan/W this week.

[SMM: Active Port Withdrawals Drive Down Social Inventory of Silicon Metal MoM] SMM data showed that social inventory of silicon metal in major regions fell by 28,000 mt WoW as of September 24.

KGHM Polska Miedź reported Sierra Gorda’s August molybdenum output at 0.1 million lb (about 45 tonnes) on its 55% attributable basis, down 90% YoY. The decline reflected lower molybdenum grade, recovery and ore throughput. Jan–Aug output fell 38.2% to 2.1 million lb (about 953 tonnes), from 3.4 million lb (about 1,542 tonnes). Despite a 6% rise in August copper output, molybdenum production declined sharply, highlighting diverging by-product performance caused by ore characteristics.