The outbreak and subsequent spread of the coronavirus is fuelling uncertainty in the aluminium market. The LME price has already hit a two year low of US$1687/t in early February. As a result, the market remains wary of weaker economic activity and demand growth, logistical backlogs and the impact on output across the value chain.

Even before the virus outbreak, our base case outlook for the metal was already showing a market moving into surplus, with all the risks pointing to a much larger oversupply position. For the time being, there are many permutations as to the outcomes from the coronavirus outbreak. Indeed, at the time of writing official data for the Chinese economy for February was yet to be released and we suspect that the government will announce delays to its publication (it has already delayed the release of trade data for January).