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China Oct copper exports fall to 8-month low

China’s copper exports in October fell 4.1% from the previous month, customs data showed on Thursday, hitting their lowest since February as an anticipated surge in shipments to overseas warehouses failed to materialise.

Exports of unwrought copper and copper products last month were 69,285 tonnes, the General Administration of Customs said. That was down from 72,257 tonnes in September but still up 8.1% year-on-year.

China, the world’s top copper consumer and importer, rarely exports large volumes of the metal. However, the spread between Shanghai copper prices SCFcv1 and London Metal Exchange (LME) prices CMCU3 recently allowed companies to profit from shipping metal overseas, provided they could arrange transport.

LME warehouses can be found nearby in Japan and South Korea but not in mainland China.

Record backwardation CMCU0-3 in LME copper, where prices for immediate delivery were far higher than for future delivery amid very low inventories, has collapsed over the past month, leading to speculation that a flurry of deliveries from China was on the way.

A shortage of shipping containers and high freight rates are causing bottlenecks in global trade, however.

China’s copper exports in the first 10 months of 2021 were up 26.1% year-on-year at 772,443 tonnes, having topped 100,000 tonnes in August.
Source: Reuters (Reporting by Tom Daly Editing by Peter Graff)

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