Glencore & Trafigura buy a total of 70,479 tonnes of aluminium during Qingdao court online auction

According to a Reuters report, Commodity traders Glencore PLC and Trafigura have picked up a 70,479 tonnes of aluminium during an online auction of metal inventory dating back to China's 2014 Qingdao warehousing scandal. This was confirmed by the e-commerce platform that hosted the auction.

The aluminium stock, formerly owned by Dezheng Resources was auctioned by the Qingdao Intermediate People's Court on a JD.com site. The company was accused of duplicating warehouse certificates to apply for bank loans.

Glencore won the aluminium action at a bidding price of RMB 485.43 million ($68.55 million) in eight consignments totalling 39,745.76 tonnes. The aluminium was in store since 2013-14. The price stands at about RMB 12,213 per tonne, a discount of 14.5% on the Shanghai aluminium closing price of RMB 14,285 per tonne on Friday. At the start of June 2014, when the scandal broke, Shanghai aluminium was trading at around RMB 14,500 per tonne.  

A separate notice on JD.com says that Glencore rival Trafigura's China unit picked up 30,733.148 tonnes of aluminium ingots for RMB 375.11 million or around RMB 12,205 per tonne. 

According to a participating trader the ingots were as good as new however, the alumina auctioned were not as good as aluminium.  

Inner Mongolia aluminium smelter Huomei Hongjun won the alumina action on Friday at a bidding price of RMB 129.5 million for 63,585.5 tonnes or at RMB 2,037 per tonne against the current alumina spot price of RMB 2,490 per tonne in northern China.