Interesting article in the AFR this morning on what has been...

Interesting article in the AFR this morning on what has been happening in China which has become a bit of a mystery. Here are the relevant snippets.

London | China's imports of refined base metals have been running at a robust pace this year, with flows of copper, zinc and nickel up on a year ago and the country on track to be a net importer of lead for a second year running.

Six months after the China's customs department stopped publishing detailed monthly reports via companies such as Reuters, some light has returned to what is happening with the world's largest metals buyer.

It has done so in the form of a new customs department website with a searchable database for this year's trade flows.

It's in Chinese only and decidedly user-unfriendly, but it's the real thing, cross-checking accurately with the first-quarter figures released under the old distribution system.

Analysts at Refinitiv have reconstructed the country's headline trade in the six months of statistical darkness that followed the suspension of the old service.

The picture that emerges is one of robust import appetite for refined metal but significant changes in flows of raw materials.

Zinc and lead

Imports of refined zinc hit a year's high of 80,600 tonnes in October, the highest monthly figure this year.

Cumulative imports have risen 13 per cent from last year's record flows to 508,000 tonnes.

Mined concentrates imports have also been running at a healthy clip, up 19 per cent to 2.4 million tonnes bulk weight.

The root cause of both higher raw material and metal imports is the strain on domestic concentrates availability as a host of smaller operators have been forced out of the market by Beijing's environmental crackdown.

Even with compensatory offset from increased imports, China's smelters have been struggling to cope with margin compression, resulting in five consecutive months of falling domestic refined zinc production, official figures show.

China's net imports of refined lead have bucked the broader trend, falling 35 per cent year on year to 47,000 tonnes for January-October.

However, until last year the country was a net exporter of lead in this form and the flip to net importer status is set to continue for a second year.

Drilling a little deeper into the figures shows imports are booming again after a five-month lull in the January-May period, when China was again a net exporter.

October's tally of 20,000 tonnes was the highest monthly import total since May 2009.

It's worth noting that, unlike zinc, lead raw material imports have also been declining. Inflows of concentrates dropped 8 per cent for January-October, extending a three-year slide.

A shortage of raw materials, both of mined concentrate and scrap, has hit domestic refined lead production, explaining the stepped-up imports of metal.