Inventories of aluminum, copper, nickel, and zinc, four of the main contracts traded on the London Metal Exchange, have plunged by up to 70 percent over the past year, as record power prices in Europe hit production and the Ukraine war threatened output from Russia, the Financial Times reports.
Traders and big consumers have tapped warehouses for the material amid the booming demand as economies have recovered from pandemic lockdown restrictions and supply chain disruptions.
The trend was most evident in zinc, where prices rose 2.8 percent on April 12 to a 16-year high of almost $4,400 a tonne.
Since the start of April, available zinc stocks on the LME plunged 60,000 tonnes to a two-year low of just over 45,000 tonnes.
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