US service centers shipped 136,300 mt of aluminum products in May, up 3% compared with the same month in 2013, the Metals Service Center Institute said Tuesday.
Shipments in the first five months of 2014 stood at 669,900 mt, up 8.6% from the year-ago period, MSCI said.
Inventories of aluminum products at end-May stood at 387,500 mt, up 5.3% from the end of May 2013. This represents 2.8 months of aluminum inventory at the current shipping rate, flat from a year earlier, MSCI said.
Chicago-based MSCI also noted that Canadian service centers shipped 14,100 mt of aluminum products in May, down 2.6% from the same month in 2013. Canadian shipments for the first five months of 2014 totaled 66,900 mt, a decrease of 0.2% over the same period in 2013.
Canadian service center inventories of aluminum products were 38,700 mt at the end of May, up 4% from a year ago. At the current shipping rate, Canada's aluminum distributors were carrying 2.7 months of supply in inventory, up from 2.6 months a year earlier.
