China’s National Bureau of Statistics today published the June production number, which they have booked as 1.685 million tonnes.

Setting aside our many reminders that China’s official numbers are often wrong, this is a record for China’s aluminium industry. That makes for 56,167 tonnes per day, and an annualised rate of 20.5mt.

Given that there is still more than 1 million tonnes of new metal capacity (on an annualised basis), our prediction of 21.5 million tonnes for 2012 is looking pretty good.

The jump in metal production comes about because of two reasons - new capacity entering the market for the first time, and restarts. Yes, the power price subsidies that started raining down in May have borne fruit, with as much as 500kt per year rejoining the fray. And that’s despite many of them claiming that they had no plans to restart.

All this extra metal is having its effect on the Shanghai price, with the spot price in the doldrums, and the 3-month price in slight backwardation.

These record levels of production presents a difficulty for those who have been predicting that China would be short of metal this year.