SHANGHAI, Jan 28 (SMM) – As of Saturday January 28, the first working day following Chinese New Year (CNY) holiday, the copper cathode inventory across major Chinese markets added 39,400 mt from last Friday January 20 to 236,000 mt. This marked the fifth consecutive week that the social inventory rose since the end of December. During the CNY holiday, the smelters maintained production, but the downstream players were off on holiday, leading to accumulating social inventory. However, due to the problem of poor transportation efficiency, the accumulation on the first working day after the CNY holiday was less than the same period last year when the growth was 58,800 mt. Nonetheless, the total inventory was 137,300 mt more than the 98,700 mt in the same period last year, of which the inventory in Shanghai added 73,400 mt from the same period a year ago, Guangdong grew 24,000 mt, Jiangsu rose 35,300 mt, and Zhejiang climbed 3,600 mt.

Specifically, the inventory in Shanghai added 15,200 mt to 140,700 mt compared with before the holiday, Jiangsu rose 9,000 mt to 45,600 mt, and Guangdong increased 15,200 mt to 40,600 mt. Affected by restricted transportation efficiency and warehousing efficiency, there are still a lot of goods on the way or waiting for warehousing. It is expected that the inventory will continue to increase in the future.

Looking forward, the arrivals of domestic copper cathode will continue to increase after the CNY holiday, but the arrivals of imports are likely to remain low. Market players are advised to pay attention to the restocking efforts of downstream players. If copper price does not drop significantly, it is expected that the downstream restocking will be sluggish, and the social inventory will still increase greatly in the future.