Singapore 21/09/2016 - China’s import of unwrought copper and copper alloy rose 1.5 percent year-on-year but fell 3.2 percent month-on-month to 300,000 tonnes in August, according to final trade data released by the country’s General Administration of Customs on Wednesday.
This is the third consecutive month of decline for the imports on a month-on-month basis.
The latest data took imports to 3.09 million tonnes in the first eight months of this year, up 20.3 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, though recently it has been fluctuating between open, closed and parity.
The month-on-month decline in imports may not continue into September due to the improved physical import arb in early-September, which prompted an inflow of material into the domestic market from bonded warehouses during late-August and early-September.
Any increase in September imports may only be temporary though, because the import margins are very thin and not profitable for all, sources noted.
Meanwhile, China’s export of unwrought copper and copper alloy surged 4.5-fold year-on-year to 57,265 tonnes in August. Year-to-August exports doubled to 338,097 tonnes compared to the same period last year.
The August exports, however, fell 23.7 percent compared to July.
Exports have surged on a year-on-year basis since March this year – and particularly since May - as LME-registered warehouses in Asia provided incentives for copper deliveries into their sheds while poor premiums in China prompted Chinese smelters to export the metal under tolling arrangements.
While the latest wave of stock arrivals into the LME Asian warehouses appear to have subsided recently, more than 100,000 tonnes of copper inventories have already been delivered into Asian locations since the start of August.
Additionally, Chinese copper scrap imports rose 8.5 percent year-on-year to 310,000 tonnes in August, which took year-to-date imports to 2.15 million tonnes. This is down 7.9 percent from the same period last year.
China's copper ore and concentrate imports increased 26 percent year-on-year to 1.45 million tonnes in August. Imports rose 34.6 percent year-on-year to 10.86 million tonnes in the first eight months of the year.