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The LME announced the delisting in a notice to members on Friday April 20. This leaves Access World with just eight LME-listed warehouses in Vlissingen, which was until 2015 the operator’s main hub in Europe for the storage of aluminium and other base metals.
The announcement comes after fresh cancellations of more than 100,000 tonnes took place in Port Klang in Malaysia last week, causing a slump in available LME aluminium stocks closely linked to the aftershocks of the sanctions on Rusal.
Vlissingen received a delivery of 4,750 tonnes of aluminium on April 11, subsequently receiving 32,275 tonnes the next day, the first deliveries into a Vlissingen warehouse since 2015. But the deliveries were not made into Access World’s sheds, according to market sources.
Vlissingen’s warehouse stocks currently hold 76,050 tonnes of aluminium on warrant.
The accumulation of aluminium stocks into Access World’s LME warehouses in Vlissingen caused a queue to form in 2011 and to peak in 2014, with more than two years of waiting time to take delivery of material.
As the result of stricter LME rules and improved end-user demand, the queue in Vlissingen was finally eradicated in September 2017.
Access World has been aggressively diversifying away from LME metals storage since 2015, investing in other commodities as well as logistics services.
Perrine Faye in London contributed to this article.