Aluminium stocks held at three major Japanese ports stood at 261,000 tonnes at the end of August, up 11 percent from 235,100 tonnes a month earlier, trading house Marubeni Corp said on Tuesday.
The stocks at the end of August were up 8.2 percent from 241,200 tonnes in the same month in 2011. Marubeni collects data from the key ports of Yokohama, Nagoya and Osaka. Japan, which has to import nearly all the metal it needs, consumes about 2 million tonnes of aluminium annually, or 5 percent of global demand. The metal is widely used in products ranging from housing materials, planes and electronics to the food sector.