IAR Recyclers Newspress September / October 2015

20 / 24

Industry News
More Metal Market Malaise
History is repeating itself. The Chinese have once
again tanked the metal market, this time for copper,
as they purchase heavily form the primary resource
produced product and reduce global imports by half
or more. Much like the steel scrap market, now the
copper market is flooded with an excess of domestic
copper scrap thus pushing the price to a new low.
“Statistics continue to portray China’s slumping de-
mand for imported copper and brass scrap, and ana-
lysts say an abundance of primary materials is one
root cause.
A late by Andy Home of Reuters
cites a presentation made at an industry event for
providing insight into why China’s demand for im-
ported copper scrap has plummeted in the previous
three years.
Home says imports of primary copper concentrates
are “booming” in China, while the country’s copper
scrap imports have fallen from 4.9 million metric tons
in 2012 to 3.9 million metric tons in 2014.
In the first five months of 2015, Home says, copper
scrap imports have totaled just 1.4 million metric
tons, down 8 percent compared with the first five
months of 2014.
Home cites a presentation made by Carlos Risapa-
tron, director of the International Copper Study
Group (ICSG), Lisbon, Portugal, in May 2015 at a
Metal Bulletin conference for providing additional
details.
The ICSG director said copper product fabricators in
China (such as wire rod makers) have taken ad-
vantage of widely available primary copper and also
have upgraded their manufacturing systems to cater
to using these primary materials.
Largely owing to these circumstances, the ICSG es-
timates China’s red metals fabricators consumed
just 550,000 metric tons of imported copper scrap in
2014, down from 1.2 million metric tons in 2012.
This fundamental shift in the fabricator sector, Home
writes, “means that China’s overall [imported] copper
scrap usage may well have peaked in 2011.” “
Page 20 Recyclers News Press