Market participants say off-warrant aluminium stocks are much higher than what is reflected in this week's London Metal Exchange data release, but many welcomed the added transparency.
As part of a new warehouse reform, the LME has begun publishing off-warrant stock data. In the data published yesterday, it highlighted an extra 1 million tonnes of aluminium available as of the end of May 2020.
Sources told Fastmarkets they expected the number to be significantly higher if it captured the true off-exchange market - with global off-warrant estimates given to Fastmarkets of 4-7 million tonnes, with some even as high as 10 million tonnes.
"This data really does only shed light on another small part of the aluminium stock around. People were expecting it to at least capture a few more million, but it gives us more [information] to work with," a market source said.
The LME data showed 1,004,227 tonnes of aluminium off-warrant in May, up from 828,964 tonnes recorded as off-warrant in February 2020.
81% of the total aluminium off-warrant...