Benchmark alumina prices continued to decline on Thursday March 11 due the sudden arrival of surplus cargoes into the market.
Fastmarkets' daily fob Australia alumina index dropped to $387.26 per tonne on Thursday, down from $402 per tonne the previous day. The index is now 7.2% lower than at the start of April when cargoes were trading as high as $417 per tonne. "All a sudden there are multiple cargoes coming out of the woodwork from all angles and the price is rapidly falling," a trader said. The most recent deal concluded on a fob Australia basis concluded at $380 per tonne for early May delivery. But traders noted in the past week there have been an increasing amount of different alumina shipments offered on the market. This is a stark difference to the past few months where the alumina market, especially in the Pacific, has been increasingly tight. "For the past year we have been used to one cargo a week - usually a Nalco...