China August Aluminium Production

The August aluminium production data has been published by IAI. Monthly production increased slightly to 2713Kt in August. The daily production catches up from July’s 86Kt to 88Kt in August.

When we check the China Q2 aluminium production, the April production decreased compared to March. The aluminium Changjiang price broke RMB12,000 in April and smelters started announcing the restart plans. Since then, the aluminium production monthly growth rate remained 4% in both May and June under the increasing domestic demand.

Aluminium production has been rising steadily since April. It was in April that the Changjiang price broke RMB12,000 and smelters started announcing restart plans. We have not yet seen the rush of restarts that were indicated by all the announcements of the last few months, but the metal price has remained robust despite climbing production and the threat of restarts

Now that the environmental inspections have been completed, we expect metal production to increase further. The all-time high for a daily rate is 89,000t, and we expect this record to be broken by October.

China’s power consumption rose by 8.3% in August, but aluminium production growth was up only by 2%. In August, the service industry and residential consumed most electricity due to the hot weather. Since we expect to see the aluminium production will increase in September, we might see the industry electricity consumption will be impacted accordingly.