Pan Pacific Copper to Utilize More Secondary Copper Sources

Pan Pacific Copper, which is joint venture of Nippon Mining & Metals and Mitsui Mining & Smelting, tries to increase the secondary materials usage for copper smelting to cover lower grade ore. The weight of secondary materials including low grade copper scrap, slag and crude copper increased to 20% from 12% 2 years ago. The firm uses mainly copper concentrate, which contains around 30% of copper. However, the concentrate grade gets lower to less than 30% when the mining copper ore has now less than 1% of copper compared with 1-2% before. The firm tries to keep the copper ingot output at annual 450,000 tonnes with the lower grade ore. However, the firm cannot increase the ore purchase under tight supply while the higher copper ore price could impact on the profitability. The firm plans 303,900 tonnes of ingot output in April-September, which is 1% lower than same period of 2007. The firm covers the lower grade ore issue by increasing the secondary copper sources.