LME-registered stocks of primary aluminium rose by a net 19,425t, extending the weekly up trend to three consecutive weeks. It was a bigger rise than the previous week's 6,375t but didn't match the huge 31,725t registered in the week prior to that.
The headline figure is now near 7-month highs as the backwardation continues to suck metal into the system.
With the exception of South Korea and Singapore, where inflow has remained steady right through the recent squeeze period, and Rotterdam, which last week received 7,200t, arrivals have tended to be concentrated on the US locations.
The US locations received 10,475t last week, split between 3,400t at Baltimore, 1,200t at Chicago, 4,250t at Detroit, 500t at New Orleans and 1,125t at St Louis.
The relatively muted response to the structural backwardation on the LME in Asia and Europe continues to be mildly surprising but China's hike late last year in the export tax on primary metal may go a long way to explaining why we haven't seen overall stocks surge in the same way as previous period of tightness.
Draws were low-key last week, which was a direct function of low cancelled tonnage. It received a one-off boost from the cancellation of 10,000t at Gwangyang in South Korea on Wednesday but an overall ratio of cancelled tonnage of 3.7% is less than exciting and doesn't promise much in the way of "out" side activity with the exception of that one tranche of metal in South Korea.
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