A slowdown in copper smelting in China towards the end of last month, along with continued weakness in the North American markets softened global smelting activity in January, according to the latest data by Earth-i and Marex Spectron.
The data gleaned from geo-spatial analysis through Earth-I’s SAVANT platform estimated global smelting fell in January with the platform’s global activity dispersion indexing at 46.5 last month compared to 55.2 in December 2020.
China’s index which fell to 50.3 in January from 55.5 in the previous month points to a move towards restocking before the country closed businesses for the Lunar New Year holiday, according to Guy Wolf, global head of analytics at Marex Spectron. He added that despite this drop the Chinese market remained robust compared to the rest of the world.
The satellite data analyzed continued weakness in the North American market and Europe, which had shown a sharp recovery to 59.9 points in December declined to 41.3 last month owing to a renewed round of COVID-19 related shutdowns across the region. The downward trend was also seen in Asia (ex-China) and South America.