London 23/08/2016 - Tin climbed to its highest since February 2015 in Tuesday afternoon LME trading amid low exchange stocks while others were little changed.
Tin peaked at $18,700 and recently traded at $18,670 per tonne, still up $130 on Monday's close. But volumes are thin - only around 200 lots have changed hands on Select so far.
Meanwhile, available tin stocks on the LME are the lowest since October 2008 - today they were unchanged at 4,630 tonnes but are down from 6,050 tonnes at the start of July. The low this year was 3,655 tonnes before Indonesia's RBT started to liquidate its stocks, much of which is thought to have gone into LME-registered warehouses.
With stocks low, tins spreads are in backwardation - its cash/threes was last at $33.
"China is the potential swing producer due to its imported ore and concentrates from Myanmar but does not seem to be raising output especially now with environmental checks in place," FastMarkets' William Adams said. "Key will be whether Indonesia manages to continue to keep production in check."
Other metals were little changed. Copper recently traded at $4,720, down $28.50, but aluminium edged $2 higher to $1,669 and nickel at $10,270 was up $5. Zinc climbed $16 to $2,296 and lead at $1,852 was $2 lower.
In data today, the EU flash manufacturing PMI and services PMI were as expected at 51.8 and 53.1 respectively while its consumer confidence disappointed at -9. China's CB leading index at 0.7 percent was better than the previous 0.5 percent.
From the US, the flash manufacturing PMI undershot at 52.1 as did the Richmond manufacturing index at -11. But new home sales were a better-than-expected 654,000.
(Editing by Mark Shaw)