SHANGHAI, Jan 10 (SMM) - Generally, SMM surveyed 48 zinc oxide enterprises with a total production capacity of 1.04 million mt/year and a total zinc consumption of 370,000 mt/year. Apart from small and medium-sized enterprises that have been long shut down due to poor orders, there are 14 large enterprise in SMM samples, with a production capacity of 504,000 mt and a coverage rate of 100%. According to SMM research, almost all enterprises in the samples planned to close during the Chinese New Year holiday. In previous years, some enterprises would extend the production during the holiday to deliver modest orders, which was in stark contrast to this year's large scale production suspension. Some small and medium-sized enterprises have been shut down since the second half of this year, resulting in a lower average operating rate of zinc oxide producers than in previous years. At the same time, some companies began to have holidays in advance after the New Year's Day. The main reason was that the new orders they received grew slowly as demand from the real estate and tyre sectors were slack, while the old orders were already fulfilled. However, the operating rates of large factories were still normal, and their holiday arrangements did not change much from previous years. The only difference was that large zinc oxide producers reduced the purchases of raw materials this year.
