SHANGHAI, Mar 8 (SMM)—China’s primary aluminium output rose 5.23% year on year to 3.02 million mt in February (28 production days), showed an SMM survey. As of early March, there was 39.68 million mt among 43.54 million mt per year of existing primary aluminium capacity in operation, while operating rates across Chinese primary aluminium producers stood at 91.1%. Daily output rose 600 mt from January to 107,700 mt as Yunnan Shenhuo, Hongtai and Inner Mongolia Chuangyuan Phase II continued to release output. The proportion of aluminum water came in at 59.3%, down 4 percentage points month on month.

As new aluminium projects will continue to release output, SMM expects China’s primary aluminium output to stand at 3.34 million mt in March, while import at about 150,000 mt as the import arbitrage window opened in end February. Domestic aluminum social inventories are likely to stand at about 1.35 million mt at the end of March as downstream demand improves.