Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comBEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) – Zhou Changchang likes to spend his spare time cruising along the streets of China’s capital with his cycling club friends, on his Tiffany Blue bicycle made by the British company Brompton.The 42-year-old teacher is part of a growing army of cycling enthusiasts in China, who are splashing out on premium bicycles made by the likes of Brompton, Giant and Specialized, fuelling a market that consultancy Research & Markets estimates could be worth $16.5 billion by 2026.Social media and e-commerce platforms say there has been a surge of interest in cycling over the past year and sales of bicycles and gear are booming.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comTypically, Chinese cyclists will pay more than 13,000 yuan ($1,870) for an inner-city, high-end foldable bike made by the likes of Brompton. High-performance road bikes, made for longer journeys, start at around 10,000 yuan ($1,450) and can go many times higher.Last month, media reported that a bicycle made by luxury brand Hermes sold for 165,000 yuan ($24,500).”The majority of riding hobbyists are willing to splurge,” e-commerce platform JD.com said last month.It said road bike sales on its platform had more than doubled from June to August compared with the same time last year, while riding apparel sales had jumped 160%.China has had a long love affair with bicycles and was once known as the “kingdom of bicycles”.For decades, bikes made by the likes of the Flying Pigeon company filled the streets.Cycling fell out of fashion when a growing middle class turned to cars but bike manufacturers saw a revival in 2014 as bike-sharing companies like Mobike and Ofo sprang up to flood cities with their fleets, offering rides as cheap as 1 yuan.Zhou, like many cyclists, said he got into biking to get fit. COVID-19 and its lockdowns also created a urge for the open road.”I really longed for the outdoors and fresh air,” said Shanghai office worker Lily Lu who went out and ordered a Brompton bike for 13,600 yuan ($1,965) the day after she was released from a three-month lockdown.As the craze gathers pace, manufacturers are struggling to meet demand. Lu said she had to wait two months to get her bicycle. Brompton did not respond to a request for comment.China’s Pardus, which makes racing bikes that can cost more than 30,000 yuan ($4,335), said sales doubled from last year and its factory was operating around the clock.”Everything is out of stock,” said Pardus branding director Li Weihai.
($1=6.96 yuan)Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Sophie Yu, Brenda Goh; Editing by Robert BirselOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. .
LME registered and “shadow” stocksSTOCKED OUTThis is currently happening in the LME zinc market. The cash premium over three-month metalAvailable live stocks shrunk to a depleted 14,975 tonnes at one stage in June and are still a meagre 22,475 tonnes.The rest of the headline zinc inventory of 82,200 tonnes is scheduled to depart.It also happened to sister metal lead last year, when the cash premium spiked to over $200 per tonne in August as LME on-warrant stocks fell to less than 40,000 tonnes.Time-spread tightness has been a recurring feature of the LME lead contract ever since and the cash premium is once again edging wider, ending Tuesday valued at $33 per tonne.That’s because lead stocks haven’t rebuilt in any meaningful way, currently totalling 39,250 tonnes with available tonnage at 34,850.The LME tin market has been living with depleted stocks since the start of 2021 and backwardation appears to be now hard-wired into short-dated spreads.PHYSICAL TIGHTNESSLow LME stocks of all three metals reflect extreme physical supply-chain tightness.All three have seen significant supply disruption over the last year with tin smelters hit by coronarivus lockdowns, zinc smelters in Europe powering down due to high energy prices and the Stolberg lead plant in Germany out of action since July 2021 due to flooding. read more Physical premiums for all three metals have hit record highs in Europe and the United States and remain close to those levels even as outright prices have dropped like a stone.The LME has acted as market of last resort for physical buyers and stocks will only rebuild once the supply-chain pressures pass.Chinese exports are helping rebalance both lead and zinc markets but the process is a slow one as freight and logistics bottlenecks brake arbitrage flows.
LME, CME and Shanghai Futures Exchange copper stocksCOPPER’S MUTED REBUILDCopper was stocked out last October, when live LME tonnage fell to 14,150 tonnes and the cash premium exploded to an eye-watering $1,000 per tonne.The LME intervened with lending caps and deferred delivery options, a tool-kit now extended to all its physically-deliverable contracts after the March nickel debacle.LME registered copper inventory recovered to a May peak of 180,925 tonnes but the trend has since reversed. Headline stocks have fallen back to 130,975 tonnes with fresh deliveries being offset by a string of cancellations as metal is turned around for the exit door.Indeed, combined inventory across all three major copper trading venues – LME, CME and the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE)- totalled 261,000 tonnes at the end of June, up 71,000 tonnes on the start of January but down by 150,000 tonnes on June 2021.It’s a muted rebuild considering the world’s largest buyer – China – spent much of the first half of the year constrained by rolling lockdowns.
LME registered and shadow aluminium stocksOFF-MARKET BUILD?Weaker Chinese demand doesn’t appear to have made any impact on ShFE copper inventory, which remains low at 69,000 tonnes, down from 129,500 tonnes a year ago.However, the headline stocks may be deceiving.The Chinese market has been rocked by another multi-pledging stocks scandal reminiscent of the Qingdao fraud of 2014.That seems to have triggered movement of both aluminium and zinc into safe-haven storage and may be deterring copper exchange deliveries.It’s quite possible that such rotation between visible and non-visible storage is accentuating the LME stocks downtrend as well.Registered aluminium stocks, for example, collapsed by 64% over the first half of the year. Live tonnage stands at just 156,300 tonnes.Yet there is no sign of tension in aluminium time-spreads, the cash-to-three-months period trading in mild contango.The market seems to be assuming that there is no shortage of aluminium despite the headline stocks figure ticking lower every day.But if metal is available, it is evidently sitting in the statistical darkness.One small clue as to its existence was a 92,000-tonne build in LME shadow aluminium stocks over the course of April and May.Such metal is primed for LME warranting if price and spreads move into the right alignment and the recent rise suggests that some metal at least is being enticed back to the paper market from the physical market.REGIONAL IMBALANCEJust about all of the shadow aluminium stocks build has occurred in Asia, which accounted for 87% of the 289,978 tonnes in this category at the end of May.LME warehouse locations in Europe held just 21,642 tonnes and U.S. ones 14,608 tonnes.The same regional skew is clear to see across all the LME base metals and is as equally true of registered stocks as it is of shadow inventory.It is a symptom of the supply and freight issues that have roiled the metals markets since the onset of COVID-19 two years ago.It is also a warning that metals supply chains are still far from functioning efficiently, even as prices bow to the weight of macro selling.The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com