Singapore 22/08/2016 - China’s import of unwrought copper and copper alloy rose 4.1 percent year-on-year but was down 18.4 percent month-on-month to 310,000 tonnes in July, according to final trade data released by the country’s General Administration of Customs on Sunday.
This took imports to 2.78 million tonnes in the first seven months of this year, up 22.8 percent from the same period last year.
Year-to-date data continued to show strong growth largely due to strong imports in the first quarter of the year owing to earlier arbitrage opportunities between the Shanghai Futures Exchange and London Metal Exchange – the import arb window has mostly been closed since late-January.
Preliminary July copper imports data released earlier in August – which includes both metal and products – showed imports falling 14.3 percent month-on-month, making July the fourth straight month of decline on a month-on-month basis.
Market participants were not overly pessimistic about the decline in July imports as they saw this as largely due to a lack of import arb opportunities and the digestion of domestic inventories.
Meanwhile, China’s export of unwrought copper and copper alloy rose five-fold year-on-year to 75,022 tonnes in July. Year-to-July exports doubled to 280,831 tonnes compared to the same period last year.
Chinese copper smelters had delivered metal into London Metal Exchange-registered warehouses in Southeast Asia – an activity that had started since late-March – on attractive warehouse incentives and lacklustre physical market.
More copper are expected to flow from China into LME Asia warehouses from late-August and September onwards due to poor premiums in China while some trading houses are still able to breakeven during exporting despite lower warehouse incentives.
Additionally, Chinese copper scrap imports slipped 22 percent year-on-year to 280,000 tonnes in July, which took year-to-date imports to 1.84 million tonnes. This is down 10.3 percent from the same period last year.
China's copper ore and concentrate imports increased 46.4 percent year-on-year to 1.38 million tonnes in July. Imports rose 36.1 percent year-on-year to 9.41 million tonnes in the first seven months of the year.