Uncertain fate for Chinese aluminium sector
Bank of America Merill Lynch recently examined the Chinese aluminium industry. It notes that Japan built a sizable smelting industry in the years after World War II, just as China has today. However, Japan’s aluminium industry bit the dust almost as quickly as it rose. Could China’s smelters be bound for the same fate?
According to BAML, what did for Japan’s was a lack of upstream and downstream integration in the business, but, more importantly, the twin oil-price shocks of the 1970s and an appreciating yen, which hit competitiveness. The US bank’s analysts write think today’s dynamics are different, and that, where Japan’s aluminium industry fell victim to external shocks, the pain in China’s is “largely self induced”.
Chinese smelters enjoy much cheaper energy than Japan’s did thanks to falls in the prices of the thermal coal which provides them with electricity. Moreover, they say a falling yuan has bolstered competitiveness in an industry “increasingly geared up to export surplus metal”.
Still, Chinese overcapacity and overproduction endures, forcing global aluminium prices down and keeping the industry loss-making. They wrote “The lack of profitability at China’s smelters is a key issue and this is where the country shares similarities with Japan. Government support has long been a staple of China’s aluminium industry and it is a key reason that necessary supply adjustments have so far been tepid. And yet this economic policy is costly, and looking at recent announcements, including from the Central Economic Work Conference, we believe authorities are acutely aware that the status quo is not sustainable.”
China’s smelters have announced around 4 million tonnes of cutbacks in recent months, and BAML believes more smelting capacity could be culled through 2016 (there is a difference between production and capacity cuts; the former are temporary, the latter permanent). In other words, China can and probably will still make the cuts needed to save its industry while it still can.
Source : news.markets