The aluminium markets have just seen another twist in what’s become a long-running stocks carousel. But this time, the spin may be nearing its end. As reported by Reuters on August 20, over the past six weeks, a hefty 156 thousand tonnes of aluminium found its way into London Metal Exchange (LME) warehouses. Yet, this wasn’t fresh metal entering the system. It was almost exclusively a reclassification of existing off-warrant supplies already stashed away in Port Klang, Malaysia.
So, when you read ‘reclassification of existing off-warrant supplies’, it means the metal was already physically sitting in the warehouse (say, Port Klang in Malaysia). But it was being kept off the books in private storage deals. Now, some of that same aluminium has been switched back into ‘on-warrant’ status, so it suddenly appears in the official LME stockpile numbers.
This suggests that what looked like a surge in availability was actually more of an inventory shuffle. Even so, the total LME stockpile (registered plus off-warrant) remains down nearly 300 thousand tonnes since early 2025, sitting at approximately 717 thousand tonnes. By comparison, even that modest bump since May, i.e. an increase of just 41,000 tonnes barely registers as a ripple in the overall decline.
