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China's much-anticipated round of national metal reserve auctions was scheduled to take place over two days, but all the copper and aluminum to be auctioned was sold in just one day, according to an announcement on the auction platform and two industry sources.
China's State Administration of Grain and Material Reserves announced last month that it would sell 20,000 tons of copper, 50,000 tons of aluminum and 30,000 tons of zinc from state reserves on July 5-6. It is a rare move aimed at calming the rise in metal prices. Rising metal prices have pushed up the cost of raw materials for Chinese manufacturers.
The aluminum was divided into about 200 lots, with the latter 250 tons auctioned at 1152 GMT on Monday, according to an announcement on a bidding platform run by state-owned China North Industries Corp (Norinco).
Only manufacturers and processors were allowed to bid, and the names of the buyers were not released.
Aluminum was sold at around 18,075 yuan ($2,797) a ton, a source at a state-run metals company said, a 5.3 percent discount to Monday's aluminum settlement price on the Shanghai Futures Exchange.
The auction for copper began at 0000 GMT and the latter batch of 146 tons was sold after 75 minutes, according to the China Minmetals electronic bidding platform, which hosted the auction.
"It was snapped up within seconds," said a second source who followed the auction and works for a copper wire manufacturing company. He put the auction price at about 67,700 yuan per ton, a 1.6 percent discount to the price of Shanghai copper futures for August delivery.
No announcement of the zinc sale was seen, but a source said the metal was sold for about 21,000 yuan per tonne, compared with about 22,000 yuan for Shanghai futures zinc.
This total of 100,000 tons of the metal is just the batch the State Reserve Bureau plans to put up this year. No date has been announced for the next auction.
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