Singapore 08/07/2016 - Deliverable copper stocks at warehouses in the Shanghai Futures Exchange system edged up 236 tonnes or 0.1 percent week-on-week to 162,130 tonnes as of July 8, according to data from the exchange. This is the second consecutive week stocks have increased.
This week, SIPG Logistics in Shanghai saw the most copper arrivals, with 2,710 tonnes entering its sheds.
Copper inventories started to rise last week after seven straight weeks of stock declines - the increase largely reflects the start of the off-peak period for demand and post-maintenance restarts among some smelters.
But the increase over these past two weeks - of 6,895 tonnes or 4.4 percent since the June 27 week – is too small to determine if a new trend is in place, sources said.
The closed import arb between Shanghai and London since late-January has largely halted the inflow of copper into SHFE warehouses and resulted in many weeks of stock declines since the week of March 21.
Meanwhile, SHFE aluminium stocks continued lower, falling 14,343 tonnes or 8.8 percent week-on-week to 149,321 tonnes as of July 8.
Other than a slight increase of 513 tonnes in the week of April 18, SHFE aluminium stocks have been falling for more than three months.
The decline - inventories have fallen 56.3 percent or 192,294 tonnes since the week of March 21 - reflects tightness in the domestic spot market following production cuts among Chinese smelters since last year, industry participants said.
The spot market tightness is evident in SHFE aluminium remaining in a backwardation since late-April. Analysts have mostly pushed back their expectations of when spot market inventory could rise – this is now seen in end-July at the earliest compared with initial predictions of late-June.
The backwardation in the spreads between the SHFE July contract and most active September contract was at 450 yuan at Friday’s close.
In other metals, zinc inventories increased 628 tonnes to 206,722 tonnes and lead rose 4,294 tonnes to 36,711 tonnes this week.
Nickel inventories gained 3,899 tonnes to 103,172 tonnes while tin stocks fell 30 tonnes to 2,924 tonnes.
(Editing by Mark Shaw)