Recently, the import data of non-ferrous metals released by the Chinese Customs showed that the import volume of copper, aluminum and related products fell for two consecutive months.

The decline of China s imports has lost important support for international metal prices. Zhao Weiwei, metal analyst of Tianqi Futures, said, "Last Friday, although the A-share market rose sharply and the credit data in August were better than expected, all three metal varieties in the domestic futures market fell, and it is estimated that metal prices will be suppressed by import data in the short term".

Market inventory continues to grow significantly

While China s imports continued to decline, the market inventory continued to grow significantly.

Recent data shows that although some smelting enterprises are temporarily closed due to the impact of environmental protection, China s lead market will still have a surplus of 270000 tons this year. After the news, the international lead price fell sharply, with a cumulative drop of 14% in the last two trading days of last week. The sharp drop of lead price also brought pressure on other base metals.

On the other hand, data shows that LME copper inventory increased by 750 tons last Friday, reaching 318.325 million tons in total. LME copper inventory has gradually increased since the beginning of July, with a cumulative increase of up to 25%; LME aluminum inventory also remained around 4.6 million tons, close to the historical record. The copper inventory of Shanghai Futures Exchange surged 10288 tons last week to 97396 tons, the highest level in nearly two years; Aluminum inventory also increased 5856 tons to 228534 tons last week.

Abundant supply in domestic metal market

While the international metal price is under pressure, the domestic metal market is not optimistic. The latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows that China s copper, lead and zinc production reached a record high in August. Deng Hong, an analyst of Maike Futures, said in the report, "From the output data of domestic non-ferrous metals, the supply will increase, while the current consumption has not reached the level of the same period last year, and the phenomenon of oversupply will reappear, which will suppress domestic metal prices".