Japanese port stocks maintain lower trend

Stocks of aluminium at Japan’s main ports were 228,600t at the end of April, according to estimates from local trade house Marubeni Corp.

That represented a 13% month-on-month increase from stocks of 201,500t at the end of March, with locals pointing to the impact of delayed vessels—a common factor in explaining month-on-month volatility in these figures.

However, end-March stocks were down by 3.7% from last year’s levels (236,800t) and, as the chart shows, this has been the pattern since March 2006. Only once since then—August 2006—have local port stocks been above the 250,000t level and then only marginally at 251,600t.

In terms of global reported stocks, we are still waiting for the April producer data to be released. However, the cumulative stocks movement between the world’s big three futures exchanges and Japan was a negligible net decline of 617t.