For anyone purely judging manganese ore supply in China by looking at port stocks, he or she could misread the market supply picture due to rising "invisible stocks" in the past one to two months, sources told Fastmarkets.
Typically, ore stocks are either stored at ports or held by producers at their warehouses or local storage sites. While port stocks are visible and measurable, the latter can be hard to estimate; they are therefore referred to as "invisible stocks" by some participants in the market.Manganese alloy producers in China used to hold sufficient stocks to sustain two to three weeks of normal operations, accounting for their usual production pattern and demand from customers. But this is no longer the case since production...