Chinese market participants showed more buying interest in seaborne alumina cargoes this week, with a stronger yuan giving them more purchasing power in overseas markets, several sources told Fastmarkets on Wednesday May 26.
"We heard [the Chinese] have interest in [buying seaborne] alumina although we didn't hear too many offers at the index basis [in the market]," one alumina trader said.
Several domestic Chinese alumina traders told Fastmarkets they considered a fob Australia alumina price at $278-280 per tonne tradeable under the current exchange rate between the US dollar and yuan - $3-5 per tonne higher than the current alumina index price.
Fastmarkets calculated its daily benchmark
alumina index, fob Australia at $274.90 per tonne on Tuesday, little changed from $274.15 per tonne the day prior amid a quiet market in the past two weeks.
The yuan was...