Onahama Smelter to Start New Copper Melting Furnace

Mitsubishi Materials completes the building works of 8 billion yen new copper melting furnace at Onahama smelter in Fukushima by end of the month. The firm starts to heat the furnace from early November starting commercial operation in December. The firm tries to pump up the operation to full capacity in March 2008. Onahama smelter melts copper ore by reverberatory furnace with shredder dust energy. The smelter introduces the new furnace for pretreatment of the ore to increase the output capacity from annual 160,000 tonnes to 200,000 tonnes. With the new furnace, the reverbeatory furnace can increase the treatment of shredder dust from current 12,000 tonnes per month to 15,000 tonnes. Mitsubishi Materials controls 50% of the joint venture smelter with 31% share by Dowa Holdings and 12% by Furukawa. The smelter produces annual 220,000 tonnes of electrolytic copper with 160,000 tonnes of inner materials and 60,000 tonnes anode from Naoshima smelter in Kagawa. With the new furnace, the Onahama smelter can produce 260,000 tonnes of electrolytic copper and supplies 40,000 tonnes of additional metal for Dowa group.