The price of zinc continues to climb while other industrial metals take a short breather after a very eventful end of the year. Its price continued its rise on the London Metal Exchange (LME) last week, while those of the other major metals began to fall gradually. All the details in our post.
Price increases since December
The rise in zinc prices dates back to December 2017. The price per tonne then climbed along with those of other industrial metals, including nickel, copper, aluminium, lead… While the latter have somewhat caught their breath after the year-end holidays, zinc, for its part, continues its momentum. However, it should be noted that its price did not make a spectacular leap either. Nevertheless, it still climbed by 10 % in just one month. Thus the price of zinc went from 3 295 dollars to 3 266 dollars.
Zinc price, China sets the pace
According to analysts at Capital Economics, the rise in zinc prices is explained by the surge in Chinese imports in December. In anticipation of a possible reduction in metal production for anti-pollution reasons, China, the world’s number one importer of base metals, hastened to increase its purchases abroad. And if such a situation persists, specialists fear a tightening of supply. As an analyst at Marex Spectron explains: “Zinc demand came notably from industrial buyers, not just financial investors.”
What about the other metals?
On the LME, copper, aluminium and nickel saw their prices fall after tumultuous year-end holidays. It should be recalled that their respective prices reached their highest levels compared with previous years. Currently, the price of copper is 7 143 dollars, whereas a week ago the tonne was trading at 7 259,50 dollars. The tonne of aluminium, for its part, went from 2 275 dollars to 2 222,50 dollars. Finally, the nickel price has been on a rollercoaster since the beginning of the year. In just one week, it indeed fell to 12 330 dollars per tonne, before rebounding to 12 575 dollars.
On the other hand, some other metals are also continuing to rise like zinc. In particular we have lead, which went from 2 520 dollars per tonne to 2 594 dollars, as well as tin, whose price went from 19 750 dollars to 19 875 dollars per tonne.