Global aluminium short-term outlook December 2019

The aluminium market service short term outlook (STO) is published monthly and provides a forecast of aluminium supply and demand fundamentals over the next two-years. Our base case global metal balance for 2020 shows a modest surplus. However, this is based on a critical assumption that producers will cut back output. Producers will only curtail production if their operations are expected to be unprofitable for a long period of time. There are reasons to believe that this may be the case over the period 2020-2022. With this looming uncertainty around producers’ supply response, there aluminium price is expected to remain under downward pressure for longer.