Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) has launched one-tonne futures contracts in nickel and tin, and a five tonne mini-lead contract, Reuters reported. The new contracts – which are aimed at Chinese retail investors – are denoted in yuan, but based on London Metal Exchange (LME) settlement prices. Unlike the LME contracts, the Hong Kong minis are settled monthly rather than daily and only in cash.

The launches on Monday this week come a full year after the bourse listed its first commodity contracts in copper, aluminium and zinc. After an initial flurry when those contracts launched, interest has tailed off. HKEx has waived exchange fees on the contracts until the end of June 2016 to help the contracts build liquidity.

This is the second tin futures launch this year, following the introduction of nickel and tin trading on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) at the end of March. The SHFE nickel contract has been a great success, but tin trading volumes have generally been very thin. Given the downward trend in tin prices in China throughout most of this year and the experience of the SHFE contract, it seems unlikely that the HKEx tin mini contract will take off quickly.