After two consecutive weeks of inventory growth, despite concentrated arrival of goods over the weekend, domestic aluminum billets inventories still showed only mild growth. According to SMM statistics, the domestic social inventory of aluminium billets on Apr 18 was 256,700 mt, up 2,700 mt WoW, up 5,200 mt from Apr 15 and 101,600 mt YoY, remaining at the highest compared to the same period of past four years. However, the outflow from warehouses in the second week of April was 51,500 mt, up 14,500 mt WoW. Excluding the impact of fewer trading days in the week after the Qingming Festival holiday, it still rose by 4,900 mt compared with the last week of March, which was the best level for past half month.
On the supply, SMM updated the national aluminum billets survey samples in the week, and the number of monthly survey sample companies totalled 175, with a total production capacity of 30.995 million mt. The total national aluminum billets production in March (31 days) was 1.508 million mt, up 29.8% MoM from 346,000 mt in February (29 days); monthly output rose by 20,200 mt or 15.5% YoY. The operating rate of aluminium billet plants stood at 60.6% in March, up by 2.6% MoM but down by 4.8% YoY. In the first peak season of the year, since domestic aluminum billets inventories began to drop at the end of February, driven by rigid demand, the aluminum billets processing fees in the three places remained resilient amid rising aluminum prices. High operating rate of domestic aluminum billets and increase in production days boosted the production in March.
