China has for the first time revealed the estimated size of its copper inventories, shedding light on one of the commodity market’s biggest mysteries.
Chinese copper inventories stood at 1.9m tonnes at the end of 2010, more than the US consumes in a year, according to estimates by the state-backed China Non-Ferrous Metals Industry Association. The estimate is significantly higher than the 1.0m-1.5m tonnes range that foreign executives have assumed in the past.
The estimates, which were announced at a recent meeting of the International Copper Study Group but have not been made public, imply that real Chinese copper demand may have been lower than thought in recent years.