China’s locally-produced copper scrap is expected to peak as early as 2014, a director at powerful industry body the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, said on Sunday.

“Another five to six years, the collection of copper scrap domestically
would enter into the peak period,” Lu Jian, director of the information
department of the association’s recycling branch, told Reuters on the
sidelines at the end of a two-day copper industry conference in Wuhan
city in Hubei province.

He did not provide a scrap production estimate for that period but for
this year Lu said the production of copper scrap in China would fall
from last year’s 600,000-700,000 tonnes following a sharp supply fall
in the first quarter, when the global financial crisis cut demand.

“The local collection of copper scrap basically stopped in the first quarter,” Lu said.

He added that imports had also fallen mainly due to reduced overseas
supply and tighter customs checks on scrap imports since May,
increasing the cost of imports.

China produces a third of its copper scrap, heavily relying on imports,
which fell 33 percent on the year to near 3 million tonnes in the first
nine months of the year.

Scrap is used both by smelters as feed for the production of refined
copper in China and by fabricators as feed for the production of
semi-finished copper products.

A shortage of scrap boosted imports of refined copper to record highs
in the first half by China, the driver for the over 100-percent price
rise on the London Metal Exchange this year.

A quarter of China’s semi-finished copper products is made from copper
scrap and a third of the country’s refined copper production is made
from scrap, Lu told the copper conference.

China produced 1.2 million tonnes of recycled copper in the first nine
months of the year of which only a third came from locally collected
scrap, he said.

That recycled copper output reflects a near 16 percent fall in monthly
production on average this year. The output was 1.9 million tonnes in
2008.

Source: Reuters

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