LONDON: Aluminium slid to its lowest in nearly a month on Thursday on worries about oversupply after a rise in output from top producer China and heavy flows into LME warehouses in Asia.

Total Chinese production in September rose to 2.75 million tonnes, the highest in 15 months, while global average daily output touched a record, data from the International Aluminium Institute (IAI) showed.

The London Metal Exchange also reported that 77,075 tonnes of aluminium had arrived at Asian warehouses over two days, largely in South Korea.

Benchmark aluminium on the LME shed 1.2 percent to close at $1,612 a tonne, its weakest since Sept. 22.

“That (output) data from China ... is fuelling some new fears about oversupply in China,” said Gianclaudio Torlizzi, partner at consultancy T-Commodity in Milan.

“Higher prices, especially in Shanghai, have been giving good incentives for smelters to restart production.”

Last year loss-making smelters in top aluminium producer China shut millions of tonnes of capacity, but prices surged nearly a fifth from a low in January to a 13-month peak in August.

Paul Adkins, managing director of Beijing-based consultancy AZ-China, said there had already been 1.8 million tonnes of restarts so far this year.

“Other than the restart volume, new (Chinese) capacity reached 2.9 million tonnes this year. Based on our record, there will be another 1.3 million tonnes of new capacity entering the market,” Adkins told the Reuters Global Base Metals Forum.

Copper fell as steps by China to cool its real estate market, a key metals user, dampened buying interest.

China’s Guangzhou city will ramp up monitoring of irregular activities in its property market, while developers in the city of Wuhan will be scrutinised more closely.

“Near term, the market remains worried about the negative impact of cooling measures on the property market,” Helen Lau, of Argonaut Securities, said in a report.

LME three-month copper fell 0.4 percent to end at $4,652 a tonne, but prices are holding above one-month lows of $4,623.25 hit last Friday.

“We’re now in a no-man’s land for copper. The main trend is still down, but being close to such strong support, I cannot rule out a short-term move higher. We went long today betting on a rebound after the latest data from China was a bit better than expected,” Torlizzi said.

Zinc dropped 0.9 percent to close at $2,287 and nickel slid 1.8 percent to $10,130.

Lead bucked the trend with a 0.9 percent gain to $2,014 while tin finished down 0.5 percent to $19,825.—Reuters