Primary Aluminum Market Still in Deficit, says WBMS

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The latest Metals Balances Report published by the World Bureau of Metal Statistics (WBMS) suggests that market balance for primary aluminum ended in a deficit during the initial three-month period of the current year. The calculated market deficit during the quarter was 141 kt. This follows a full year deficit of 1130 kt in 2017.

The overall production of primary aluminum declined marginally by 10 kt during Q1 this year, as compared with the corresponding quarterly period in 2017. The reported stocks of aluminum rose by 85 kt during March alone. It must be noted that stocks had surged higher by 272 kt in February this year. The total stocks as on end-March this year were 2,719 kt, as compared with the stocks of 2,346 kt at the end of 2017. The stocks held by the four exchanges-London, Shanghai, USA and Tokyo increased by 373 kt during the first three months of 2018, when compared with end-2017 levels. The four exchanges together held a stock of 2,312 kt at the end of the first quarter.

The overall global aluminum production has dropped slightly by 0.1% during the first three months of 2018. WBMS estimated the Chinese aluminum output at 8.119 million t, accounting for nearly 55% share of the entire global output. The production by the EU-28 region edged higher slightly by 1.4% from the previous year whereas the output from NAFTA region fell sharply by almost 5.3% from the year-ago level. The primary aluminum output during the month of March 2018 alone totaled 5,013.4 kt, whereas the monthly consumption almost leveled at 5,085.1 kt during the month.

The global demand for primary aluminum has dropped by 2.3% to total 14.9 million tonnes during Jan-Mar ’18, upon comparison with the previous year. The Chinese apparent demand declined by 1.5% when compared with 2017. Also, EU-28 demand stood lower by 22 kt during the opening three months of 2018.