Global aluminium short-term outlook March 2017

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. The promise of China output cuts and better short term demand prospects propelled the LME aluminium price to a 2 year high over past month. March will end with the official LME cash price trading well above $1950/t. Since the first trading day of 2017, the aluminium price has gained $253/t, an increase of 15%. Having struggled against most of the other LME base metals for much of 2016, aluminium is currently second only to lead in prices performance on the exchange. In recent months price under-performance has given way to price over-performance. It is certainly true that there have been some tangible positive developments for aluminium, however, we expect the recent prices gains to be trimmed as we move further into 2017.