China’s metals makers booked their strongest quarter since 2016 in January to March, benefiting from consistently higher prices for their products, enjoying an additional boost from the Middle East crisis.
Aluminum and copper were the biggest winners, Bloomberg reported earlier today, helping Chinese metals producers book combined profits of some $21 billion for the three months to March. Copper prices hit an all-time high in the first quarter and aluminum rose to the highest since 2022.
The disruption in energy production in the Middle East, meanwhile, curbed sulfuric acid production, leading to a price surge for the essential industrial commodity. Sulfuric acid prices surged to historic highs because of the Middle East war.
Yet the war between the United States and Israel, and Iran, also disrupted metals production in the region, with Iranian attacks on Gulf states hitting at least two major aluminum-producing hubs: Aluminium Bahrain and Emirates Global Aluminium.
“Iran’s strikes on Middle Eastern aluminium plants are threatening to send a fragile market into crisis, raising the prospect of record prices,” Britannia Global Markets said at the end of March, as quoted by Reuters. The publication reported at the time that aluminum stocks in LME warehouses had dropped by 60% since May 2025.
“The conflict’s impact is being amplified because constraints on production elsewhere have eroded global inventories, leaving the market with little buffer against shocks,” Britannia Global Markets also said at the end of March.
China is home to some of the largest metals producers in the world, which puts the country’s metals industry in a favorable position in times of shortages. Bloomberg noted in its report from today that the metals industry performance reflected broader improvement in Chinese industrials over the first quarter of the year as the government clamped down on overcapacity and intense competition that compromised profitability.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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