Copper scrap imports to shoot up in China

LONDON （Commodity Online）: With China going strong as far as copper imports are concerned, the metal is likely to witness a major boom in the coming days.

To add to that news agencies reported that China’s scrap copper imports will set new records this year in terms of metal content as rising labor costs drive companies to seek higher quality material.

The metal content in imports this year has climbed to 39 percent from 18 percent to 20 percent copper before 2008.

This year the scrap copper imports will hit a record, in terms of the copper content. The copper contained in scrap imports totaled 1.1 million tons in January to August. The figure for 2009 was 1.2 million tons.

Rising labour cost means it’s no longer profitable to import scrap which only contains a 10 percent to 20 percent copper. As China’s copper raw material supply shortfall will increase by 87 percent from 2009 to 5.89 million tons in 2015, scrap will have to play an even bigger role.

China will compete with Japan and Korea for such scrap amid growing domestic labor costs. Imports in January-September gained 7.6 percent to 3.2 million tons, according to customs data.