Production growth in China shows signs of re-accelerating, according to figures from the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNMIA) as carried on the IAI’s website.
According to the CNMIA figures, Chinese production hit a new monthly record of 816,000t in September, equivalent to 27,200t per day.
The CNMIA figures are running slightly higher than those released by the National Bureau of Statistics—to the tune of around 60,000t over the Jan-Sep period.
However, both sets of figures are capturing the same continued up trend. Indeed, after slowing for a period in the middle of the year, Chinese production growth seems to be picking up renewed momentum, which is significant given fears that the fast-declining alumina price may act to raise capacity utilisation rates in the country.
The figure for September itself represented year-on-year growth of 18.4%--the highest level seen since January—while cumulative production of 6.699 million tonnes in Jan-Sep represented growth of 17.6%, the fastest it’s been since March.
Even that rate, though, is well short of the growth rate in the country’s alumina sector, which according to the Bureau officials, registered growth of 68.5% to 1,178,200t in September. Cumulative production in Jan-Sep was 9.51 million tonnes, up 53% year-on-year.
Using a basic 2:1 formula for the amount of alumina need to make one tonne of aluminium, we calculate the country registered an alumina shortfall of 3.89 million tonnes in the Jan-Sep period. That’s well down on the 5.30 million gap registered in the same period of last year and that gap will continue to close as long as alumina production keeps rising at this sort of exponential rate, even if primary metal production starts accelerating a bit further.
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