Realizing dynamic balance between supply and demand in the non-ferrous metal industry

On November 25th, workers from Hebei Magnesium Wheel Magnesium Alloy Technology Co., Ltd. conducted precision machining on magnesium alloy car wheels. Photographed by Li Xiaoguo, a journalist from Xinhua News Agency
Since the beginning of this year, the non-ferrous metal industry has promoted supply side structural reform, strengthened industry self-discipline, and created a good market environment. The overall production of the non-ferrous metal industry has shown a stable operation and continuous improvement in efficiency, basically achieving a dynamic balance between supply and demand. However, structural contradictions such as rising costs, insufficient innovation, and financing difficulties have not been fundamentally resolved, and the foundation for sustained improvement in industrial development needs to be further consolidated
At the recently held "2017 China International Aluminum Week" event, Chen Quanxun, President of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, stated that in recent years, the non-ferrous metals industry has generally shown a stable production operation, fluctuating prices, and continuous improvement in efficiency.
Overall recovery of prosperity
Literature Jun, Vice President of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, introduced that on the one hand, the production of the non-ferrous metals industry has shown a trend of high in the front and stable in the back. The growth rate of the production of 10 types of non-ferrous metal smelting products has narrowed month by month, while deep processed products such as copper and aluminum that are close to consumption have maintained stable growth; On the other hand, the effectiveness of cleaning up and rectifying illegal and irregular projects related to electrolytic aluminum has further demonstrated.
Data shows that the production of 10 types of non-ferrous metals in China from January to September was 40.729 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 4.1%, a decrease of 0.8 percentage points compared to January to August, but still 3.2 percentage points higher than the same period last year. Among them, the refined copper production reached 6.608 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 6.3%; The production of raw aluminum reached 24.661 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 5.0%, a decrease of 1.1 percentage points from January to August, but still 6.4 percentage points higher than the same period last year.
Since 2017, thanks to the supply side structural reform, the price of electrolytic aluminum has continued to rise, reaching a high of 15000 yuan per ton from 13000 yuan at the beginning of the year. Benefiting from the sharp rise in metal prices, nearly 90% of the 118 listed non-ferrous metal companies have achieved profitability.
From January to September, 8244 non ferrous metal industrial enterprises above designated size achieved a main business income of 4405.20 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.3%; The total profit achieved was 173.02 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 50.9%, which was 4.5 percentage points narrower than the first half of the year.
The achievement of the non-ferrous metal industry is not easy won, "Chen Quanxun told reporters. In the past five years, the industry has eliminated 2.4 million tons of outdated production capacity and encouraged and guided 5.66 million tons of low competitive production capacity to exit the market. This year, China has launched a special action to clean up and rectify illegal and irregular projects in the electrolytic aluminum industry with unprecedented efforts, and used environmental remediation actions to force enterprises to temporarily shut down production capacity, effectively improving market supply.
Continuously improving foundation to be consolidated
The development of China's non-ferrous metal industry, especially the aluminum industry, has gone through a struggle process from "relying on imports" to "partially alleviating", and then to "basically meeting" the needs of national economic and social development. The total scale of the non-ferrous metal industry has steadily increased, the industrial layout is becoming increasingly reasonable, and the innovation system is gradually improving.
Compared to the past, backbone enterprises in the industry have made significant progress in equipment level, process control, management level, and labor productivity. "Literature reveals that some technical and economic indicators and equipment level even lead the world. Especially in emerging fields, enterprises are vigorously developing personalized products, with rapid development of aviation medium and thick plates, aluminum body panels, and other new products such as aluminum air batteries and nano ceramic aluminum starting to move from research and development to industrialization. In addition, "replacing steel with aluminum", "saving wood with aluminum", and "saving copper with aluminum" have promoted the stable and rapid growth of aluminum consumption, becoming a stabilizer for the sustained and healthy development of the industry.