The Shanghai Futures Exchange was the first market to start trading on the floor this week. The three basic metal futures listed on the stock market closed at yesterday's green word yesterday. The Shanghai zinc main stock 0808 fell to a low of 16,475 yuan/ton yesterday. This is the lowest record for zinc futures since its listing in the previous period.
Oversupply of zinc into recognized facts
Since the collective collapse of the global commodity market last week, international oil prices have stabilized and the price of agricultural products has been lifted from the weakness of popularity, and the momentum of the previous upsurge has continued. However, non-ferrous metal varieties have not emerged. Plunging shadows.
In fact, with the introduction of global production statistics, the oversupply of nonferrous metals, especially zinc, has become a recognized fact in the industry this year. However, the original market generally believed that this excess was caused by the substantial increase in supply, but the latest statistics show that the reduction in global consumer demand is the main reason for the continuous decline in metal prices.
The latest monthly report released by the International Lead and Zinc Research Group (ILZSG) shows that in the first quarter of 2008, the global refined zinc market had an excess supply of 72,000 tons. Global zinc consumption fell to 2.67 million tons, which was 2.778 million tons in the same period of last year. ILZSG stated that the production of refined zinc in the first quarter of 2008 was 2.839 million tons, which was unchanged from 2.837 million tons in the same period of last year.
China's zinc imports fell by 32% in April
This echoes the latest trade data from China, the world’s largest consumer of non-ferrous metals. According to data released by China Customs, the nation's zinc imports reached 13,342 tons in April this year, a year-on-year decrease of 32%, zinc ore, ore concentrate imports decreased by 20% year-on-year to 133,957 tons; January-April zinc imports totaled 34,870 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 26%.
In addition, several industrialized countries have recently released industrial production data closely related to the trend of metals also shows that the decline in non-ferrous metal demand is likely to come from a wide range of inflationary pressures under the overall decline in industrial prosperity, not just financial market fluctuations.
Japan’s Ministry of Finance’s data released last Thursday showed that Japan’s refined zinc exports in April fell 14% from the same period last year to 6,349 tons. Japan's own refinery commented that the decline in zinc exports mainly reflected the slowdown in demand from overseas users, and the incentive for refiners to seek export markets was due to the lack of self-building demand in Japan. Japan's zinc export market includes Indonesia and Taiwan.
UBS does not want to be multi-metal
UBS's Commodity Department released a market comment yesterday, saying that the recent drop in base metals has caused a lot of attention. The explanation for this is that there are many factors that occur at the same time. The top priority is the weak demand from consumers. "We don't want to be multi-metal, because the current price is still higher than we think we can buy." UBS said.
Previous analysis suggested that the oversupply is the main cause of the disadvantages of non-ferrous metals, but the continuous introduction of trade data for the past few days shows that the global industry’s demand for non-ferrous metals has generally begun to decline, which may mean turmoil and wide-ranging financial markets in the United States. Under the pressure of inflation, global industrial production interactions began to show signs of slowing down.