MANILA, Oct 3 (Reuters) – Aluminium climbed to the highest in more than a month on Wednesday, supported by tighter global supply with stockpiles of the metal in London Metal Exchange warehouses falling to the lowest in more than a decade. Three-month aluminium on the LME was up 0.9 percent at $2,137 a tonne by 0712 GMT, after earlier hitting $2,142, its loftiest since Aug. 31. The global market for alumina – the raw material for aluminium – has been limited this year due to an outage at Norsk Hydro’s Alunorte plant in Brazil, U.S. sanctions on Russian producer Rusal and a strike at Alcoa’s alumina refineries in Western Australia. “The concerns of supply tightness persist as Brazilian refiner Alunorte could take a year to return to normal production level,” ANZ analysts said in a note. Tighter supply elsewhere, including declining LME inventories, has offset the impact of potentially fewer aluminium smelter closures in China this winter, they said. China said last week that it would allow local authorities to adopt output curbs based on regional emission levels as part of its anti-pollution plan for winter.
* ALUMINIUM STOCKS: Stockpiles of aluminium in LME-approved warehouses was 983,250 tonnes as of Monday, the smallest since March 2008.
* ZINC: LME zinc eased 0.6 percent to $2,649 a tonne, after hitting its highest since July 9 on Tuesday of $2,728, as stockpiles of the metal in Chinese warehouses dropped to the lowest in 11 years ZN-STX-SGH last week, just before China’s Oct. 1-5 National Day holiday.
* COPPER: Copper was steady at $6,281.50 a tonne, with Asian activity still muted by a week-long break in top metals consumer China.
* DOLLAR: The euro recovered from a six-week low against the dollar after a report that Italy plans to reduce its budget deficit in the coming years provided some relief to the battered currency.
* SAMARCO: Brazilian prosecutors in Minas Gerais state said they reached a final compensation deal with mining companies Samarco, Vale and BHP Billiton regarding a 2015 dam burst, Brazil’s largest ever environmental disaster.
