According to the announcement of the auction platform and two industry insiders, China's high-profile round of national metal reserve auction was originally planned for two days, but all copper and aluminum to be auctioned were sold in only one day.
China's State Food and material reserve bureau announced last month that it would sell the national reserves of copper, aluminum and zinc from July 5 to 6, with 20000 tons, 50000 tons and 30000 tons respectively. This is a rare move aimed at calming the rise in metal prices. Rising metal prices have pushed up raw material costs for Chinese manufacturers.
The announcement on the bidding platform operated by state-owned NORINCO showed that the aluminum was divided into about 200, and the latter 250 tons were auctioned at 1152gmt on Monday.
Only manufacturers and processors were allowed to bid, and the names of buyers were not announced.
A source from a state-owned metal company said that aluminum was sold at about 18075 yuan (US $2797) per ton, 5.3% discount from the aluminum settlement price on the Shanghai Futures Exchange on Monday.
According to the China Minmetals electronic bidding platform, which presided over the auction, the auction of copper began at 0000 GMT, and the last batch of 146 tons were sold 75 minutes later.
"It was robbed in a few seconds," said the second source who followed the auction, who works in a copper wire manufacturing enterprise. He believes that the auction price is about 67700 yuan per ton, 1.6% higher than the Shanghai copper price delivered in August.
We didn't see the sales announcement of zinc, but a source said that the metal was sold at a price of about 21000 yuan per ton, while the price of zinc in Shanghai was about 22000 yuan.
This time, a total of 100000 tons of metal is only the batch planned by the State Reserve Bureau this year. The date of the next auction has not been announced.