国产热热热精品,亚洲视频久久】日韩,三级婷婷在线久久,99人妻精品视频,精品九热人人肉肉在线,AV东京热一区二区,91po在线视频观看,久久激情宗合,青青草黄色手机视频

Economy

Markets

Industries

Insights

Reports

Events

Jiangxi Copper predicts 2% growth in demand

By Lillian Liu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-01-20 07:58

Banking on increased demand from the government stimulus package, Jiangxi Copper, China's second-largest smelter, predicted that consumption for refined copper products will grow by 2 percent this year.

Wang Chiwei, Jiangxi Copper's executive director, said at an industry conference on Monday that 2008 refined copper output would rise 6.7 percent to 3.68 million tons and copper concentrate production would rise 8.4 percent to 920,000 tons.

Wang said China's copper smelters who use primary material as an input will run at full capacity in 2009.

Related readings:  Jiangxi Copper to inject capital to subsidiary  Jiangxi Copper Q1 net profit up 46.42% on higher selling prices  Jiangxi Copper net earnings drop by 13% for 2007  Jiangxi Copper sees capacity up 75 percent

He didn't elaborate. But commodity analysts said higher processing fees offered by foreign smelters would encourage production and ease the squeeze on Jiangxi Copper's profit margins by rising costs and bloating inventory.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc, the world's top producer of copper and gold, agreed this month to pay about 60 percent higher processing fees, at $75 a metric ton, to the Jiangxi-based company in 2009.

Global copper prices have plunged by more than 50 percent from a record $8,940 a ton in July as the global economic downturn took its toll on consumption of the metal.

The lowered price has made Chinese smelters, including Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group, the country's biggest copper smelter, trim costs by cutting output.

Liu Boyang, a metal specialist at Taifook Securities, said Jiangxi Copper's prediction is more optimistic than theirs.

"Jiangxi Copper will have difficulties having its performance, in terms of sale volume and value, to return to the early 2008 level," he said. Unlike iron and steel, the demand for copper does not necessarily increase in line with the economy, he said.

Jiangxi Copper has said that first-half earnings in 2008 rose 32 percent from a year earlier because of higher product prices, but it warned that weakening copper consumption would erode the gains in the second half.

The priority of most Chinese metal companies is to clear their stockpiles, which are depressing market prices of a wide range of metal products. Stockpiles of copper in Shanghai warehouses fell 30 percent, the biggest fall in almost a year, to 15,871 tons last week.

Jiangxi Copper's shares on Monday closed at HK$5.84 apiece, up 3.55 percent from Friday's close.