DAILY: Declines slow in Chinese spot alumina prices

The price has consecutively posted small drops of Yuan 2/t in the first two days of this week, narrowing from the sharper declines of Yuan 4–12/t seen last week, Mysteel Global noted.

Alumina offering prices in some of the country's major alumina production bases remained weak yesterday. Specifically, in the Guangxi autonomous region and Guizhou province, prices for the same grade of alumina dropped by another Yuan 5/t on day to Yuan 2,920/t and Yuan 2,950/t respectively. In contrast, prices in Shandong, Henan, and Shanxi provinces all held steady for the second straight working day at Yuan 2,780–2,855/t, according to Mysteel's assessments.

While some alumina producers and traders continued to trim their offers amid ample inventories, the pace of price reductions slowed, leading to fewer low-priced alumina cargoes in the spot market, market watchers noted.

On the downstream front, primary aluminum smelters mainly maintained alumina restocking through tenders and sought low-priced spot cargoes when needed. Spot trading stalled somewhat yesterday as alumina prices showed signs of stabilizing, with Mysteel not hearing of any transactions being finalized.

Meanwhile, major alumina futures held steady on Tuesday. The most-traded January 2026 alumina contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange logged a 0.11% gain when closing the daytime trading session and remained stable over the night session.

Written by Iris Pang, pangjunyu@mysteel.com