[SMM Copper Wire and Cable Operating Rate] The operating rate of SMM copper wire and cable enterprises was 70.77% this week, up 0.24 percentage points MoM. Overall operating performance was stable, while market performance was relatively mediocre. During the week, the pullback in copper prices suppressed the release of new orders, but enterprises had ample orders on hand and pending delivery, supporting basically stable production. New orders across downstream segments were generally weak, with demand in the home decoration sector particularly mediocre due to rising plastic raw material prices.

On March 25, the Sichuan Qimingxing 100 MW/200 MWh user-side ESS project, invested in and developed by the Municipal Industrial Investment Company, officially broke ground at the plant of Sichuan Qimingxing Aluminum Co., Ltd. The project was a key undertaking jointly developed by Meishan Industrial Investment Company and Sichuan Qimingxing, with a total investment of approximately 180 million yuan and a site area of about 30 mu, and adopted a technologically mature and performance-stable LFP battery BESS. Upon completion, the project is expected to deliver annual discharge of about 100 million kWh, effectively optimizing the enterprise's power consumption structure and improving the reliability of power supply.

Recently, the 2025 Electrochemical Energy Storage Black Start and Frequency Regulation Key Technology Research and Application Project of Huadian Group Wuchang Branch was officially and successfully accepted for grid connection. The project was jointly advanced by Huadian Group, Shanghai Electric Power Transmission & Distribution Group, and REPT Battero. As a key pilot project under the national 14th Five-Year Plan, the project took the lead in achieving engineering application, marking that REPT Battero's 324Ah battery cell has 1P C-rate performance and has passed testing under relevant national standards, enabling it to participate in future grid-side frequency regulation projects. The project accepted for grid connection this time is located in Wuhan, Hubei, with a total capacity of 9MW/9.554MWh, consisting of two 4.5MW/4.5MWh energy storage units. It is intended to build electrochemical energy storage black start capability for two sets of 9E-class combined-cycle generating units and, when the ESS is idle, to participate in secondary frequency regulation ancillary services for the power grid through the combined thermal power and energy storage frequency regulation mode.

[Zinc Price Center Rose, Demand Performance Varied Across Die-Casting Zinc Alloy Segments] This week, operating rates of die-casting zinc alloy remained rangebound. From the perspective of end-user orders, demand performance varied across segments. Demand for orders of electronic products and auto parts was relatively strong recently, while traditional hardware products were dragged down by the real estate market and performed relatively average; orders for luggage zippers were weak, but apparel zipper orders at some enterprises were relatively steady......

[Grain-Oriented Silicon Steel Prices Will Remain in a Consolidation Trend Next Week, with Limited Fluctuations] Market feedback indicated that the current core downstream demand mainly came from transformer manufacturing enterprises. Affected by the industry's traditional off-season, enterprises had weak purchase willingness and mostly adopted strategies of consuming their own inventory and making small-volume replenishments on demand. Acceptance of current prices remained stable, but there was a lack of momentum for large-scale procurement, resulting in relatively weak actual transaction performance for grain-oriented silicon steel. Due to inventory pressure on some specification resources, traders had limited room for slight discounts.

[Traders Raised Spot Quotes, and Downstream Buyers Made Purchases Based on Demand]: Ningbo spot premiums continued to rise this week, with the weekly average price up 50 yuan/mt WoW. As of this Friday, Ningbo spot prices against the 2604 contract were quoted at parity, with a premium of 60 yuan/mt against Shanghai, and the premium against Shanghai widened during the week..