Rising Copper Processing Costs Will Boost Chinese Copper Concentrate Imports

October 29 News Recently, copper processing fees have increased from US$30/tonne to US$80/tonne, which is due to changes in supply and demand and price increases. As the ninth-largest copper smelter in India stopped production at the end of September, its annual production capacity was about 340,000 tons, which accounted for half of India’s copper smelting. This made the demand for copper concentrate loose, and copper processing fees have been affected by copper The supply of minerals is tightly suppressed.

Contrary to the fact that the supply of copper concentrate tends to be loose, the demand for refined copper is strong, which is conducive to the improvement of processing fees.

** The continued rise in prices is another good thing. In the past three months, the price of intensive prices has risen by 60%, which is very helpful for smelting enterprises to increase smelting profits.

The changes in supply and demand for copper concentrates and refined copper were confirmed in the China Customs data. In September 2010, China imported 240,000 tons of refined copper, which was lower than the 265 thousand tons in August, but copper ores and concentrates were imported in September. It increased substantially to 684,000 tons, which is much higher than the 485,000 tons in August.

The increase in processing fees will undoubtedly stimulate domestic copper smelting enterprises to increase their processing volume. It is expected that the current supply and demand situation will remain for the rest of 2010, and copper processing fees may continue to rise in 2011. However, copper smelting enterprises are faced with a higher threshold for energy conservation and environmental protection in terms of capacity expansion. The state’s policy on energy conservation and environmental protection is higher than any previous period.