Henry Bath reopens former Impala bonded warehouse in Shanghai FTZ

The new bonded warehouse has 20,000 square meters of capacity, can store 120,000 tonnes of metals indoors and has the same standards as an LME-listed warehouse, Henry Bath said.

Chinese Materials Storage and Transportation Development Co (CMSTD), a Chinese logistics provider better known as Zhongchu that acquired 51% of Henry Bath in January 2016 from trading house Mercuria Energy Resources, bought the warehouse from Trafigura’s Impala Terminals in December of 2017.

“We have put several copper cathodes in the new warehouse already. As a long-term collaborator with CMSTD, we are confident about the new warehouse’s service,” a delegate from a major state-owned copper smelter said in the opening ceremony of the warehouse.

China’s refined copper output of 1,481,000 tonnes in the first two months of 2018 was up 7.4% from 1,371,000 tonnes a year earlier, the country’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday.

SHFE copper stocks rose for a seventh consecutive week as of Friday – they now stand at 296,994 tonnes, an increase of 28,899 tonnes or 10.8% from a week earlier and up 85% since the start of the year.

“Henry Bath is gradually expanding its business and territory in Shanghai,” Henry Bath Group general manager Graham Hawkins said.

Henry Bath is a founding member of the London Metal Exchange, issuing the first ever warrant in 1883.

Zhongchu’s warehouses are licensed to the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) and the Dalian Commodity Exchange (DCE).

C. Steinweg Group, Access World, CMST-Henry Bath, GKE and CWT are the five leading businesses in Shanghai’s bonded warehouses and logistics sectors.

The warehouse was opened on March 16 (above). It is currently being used to store copper cathode (below).