London copper heads for 1st quarterly gain since end-2017 amid supply disruption, trade hopes

SINGAPORE: Most base metals rose on Friday, with London copper heading for its first quarterly gain since the end of 2017, as hopes of progress in U.S.-China trade talks and low inventories in some metals lent support.

"Market for a while now obviously has some concerns about economic growth. Those concerns are probably a little bit overdone, so I suspect this is a bit of a recovery from that reaction earlier in the week," said ANZ's Daniel Hynes.

"But certainly outside of that there's still an ongoing supply issue in the market. Inventories across many of the metals remain very low, so I think the market is mindful whilst demand could be weak."

FUNDAMENTALS

* COPPER: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange  rose 0.9 percent to $6,420 a tonne by 0717 GMT, while the most active copper contract in Shanghai advanced 0.9 percent to 48,800 yuan ($7,266.66) a tonne.

* COPPER IN PERU: Protests at Las Bambas in Peru showed no sign of abating, days after the mine's operator, China's MMG , warned it could declare force majeure on contracts.

* COPPER STOCKS: Stockpiles of copper in LME-registered warehouses, meanwhile, are slipping back towards 11-year lows below 120,000 tonnes hit earlier this month, but inventories in Shanghai Futures Exchange warehouses were sharply higher. <MCUSTX-TOTAL> <CU-STX-SGH>

* CHINA DEMAND: A Reuters poll showed factory activity likely contracted for a fourth straight month in March, suggesting weaker Chinese demand for raw materials.

* OTHER METALS: Aluminium rose 0.6 percent in London and 0.3 percent in Shanghai. All other base metals  except Shanghai nickel and lead rose in both exchanges.

* CHALCO: Aluminum Corp of China Ltd  posted its first quarterly loss in more than three years on low aluminium prices and weak demand. But its 2018 aluminium output grew 16 percent, beating Russia's Rusal to become the world's second-biggest publicly traded producer of the metal.

* RUSAL/BOGUCHANSKY: Rusal said the company and Rushydro have launched the first production line of Boguchansky aluminium smelter with first-stage investment worth $1.6 billion and annual capacity of 298,000 tonnes.

* TRADE TALKS: U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he had a "productive working dinner" the previous night in Beijing, kicking off a day of talks aimed at resolving the bitter trade dispute between the world's two largest economies.

* CODELCO: State-owned Chilean miner Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, expects output at its El Teniente mine to rise to more than 500,000 tonnes per year by 2025.

* COPPER TC/RC: China's top copper smelters on Thursday lowered their floor treatment and refining charges (TC/RC) for the second quarter of 2019 by more than 20 percent, indicating a tighter copper concentrate market.