SMM News on July 3:
As of Thursday, July 3, SMM copper inventories in major regions across China increased by 5,700 mt from Monday to 131,800 mt, and increased by 1,700 mt compared to Thursday last week. After a one-week decline, weekly inventories have risen again and are currently 278,000 mt lower than the 409,800 mt recorded in the same period last year.
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Specifically, copper inventories in the Shanghai region increased by 3,000 mt from Monday to 92,300 mt. The increase in inventories in this region was due to the impact of increased arrivals of imported copper. In the Jiangsu region, inventories increased by 1,200 mt to 13,500 mt, while in the Guangdong region, inventories also increased by 1,200 mt to 13,500 mt. Despite fewer arrivals, consumption was weaker this week, as reflected by the continuous decline in the daily average outflows from warehouses in Guangdong. The continuous rise in copper prices has suppressed the enthusiasm for downstream procurement.
Looking ahead, we expect that the arrivals of imported copper next week will slightly increase compared to this week, and the arrivals of domestically produced copper will also increase, with total supply expected to be higher than last week. Regarding downstream consumption, affected by the high copper prices, finished product inventories of downstream enterprises continued to increase at the end of this week, and the capacity utilization rates of many processing enterprises will decline next week. Therefore, we believe that next week will see an increase in supply and a decrease in demand, with weekly inventories possibly continuing to rise.
