[28 July SMM lead data]

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

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

The nickel prices rose steadily last week. Before the Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday, the continuous falling nickel inventory in China and overseas pushed up the nickel prices sharply.

On the supply side, after three consecutive rounds of coke price hikes in January, the profits of coking enterprises have increased significantly, heightening the enthusiasm for production.

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.

Nickel sulphate spot supplies have been tight currently as the production was cut on operating losses previously, according to SMM.

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.

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