Japan Smelters and Copper Ore Suppliers Show Different Market Views

Japanese copper smelters and overseas copper ore suppliers showed different views about the global copper ore market in 2008 during their year-end price negotiation for copper concentrate shipped during 2008-2009. The ore suppliers offered lower treatment charge (TC) and refining charge (RC) to Japanese smelters with an expectation the global copper ore supply become short by 300,000 tonnes in 2008. Japanese smelters aim better price terms than the mid-year negotiation for July 2007 ? June 2008 shipment with estimation the copper ore supply-demand gap be slight in 2008 despite of the shortage. The second negotiation will be held in November between the smelters and the ore suppliers but they would hardly reach an agreement.Japanese smelters’ estimation is based on a background that higher operation is expected at Grasberg mine in Indonesia and Collahuasi mine in Chile in the second half of 2008. Another background is that Chinese copper smelters are recently increasing their production by using copper scrap and Chinese copper ore demand would be some cancelled by copper scrap, said Japanese smelter source. TC was set at US$ 50-55 per tonne and RC at US 5-5.5 cents per pound at the mid-year price negotiation in 2007. Overseas media already reported Chinese copper smelters approved TC of US$ 35 and RC of US 3.5 cents for 2008-2009 copper ore purchasing according to a trader source, although the report seemed to be based on the trader’s speculation. The ore suppliers would maintain strong selling stances in the second price negotiation with Japanese smelters in November.