Winter Park, Florida 14/06/2016 - Aluminum imports of ingot, scrap and mill products into the US and Canada (excluding cross-border trade) totalled 695 million pounds or 315,000 tonnes in April, up 14.5 percent year-on-year, according to the Aluminum Association.
Including scrap, which accounted for roughly 46 percent of reported aluminium exports in April, exports totalled 490 million pounds or 222,000 tonnes, down 6.0 percent from a year ago. Excluding scrap, exports totalled 267 million pounds or 121,000 tonnes, up 15.7 percent over last year. Exports of scrap decreased 23.3 percent year-over-year, the trade group said.
Through the first four months of 2016, total imports were up 10.1 percent to 2.486 billion pounds (1.12 million tonnes) while exports were down seven-tenths of one percent to 1.923 billion pounds (872,000 tonnes).
The US has been the world strongest market for both demand and premiums in 2016. But this has attracted large volumes of imports, which are now starting to put downward pressure on premiums.
"There's a glut of material globally and the least bad place to see it end up is the US because it's the strongest market," a US-based trader told FastMarkets.
This week, the FastMarkets US Midwest aluminium premium slipped to 7.25-7.75 cents per pound from 7.25-7.9 cents the prior week.
"Everybody and his mother has been shipping metal to the US for the last six months, which means the market could be saturated for the coming six to eight months," a European based trader said.