Japan Copper Smelters Shift to Permanent Cathode Method

Japanese copper smelters shift to use permanent cathode method as negative electrode. Pan Pacific Copper, which is joint venture of Nippon Mining & Metals and Mitsui Mining & Smelting, will introduce the method fully at Tamano smelter after the introduction at Saganoseki and Hitachi plants. The firm already introduced the method for half of the output. Sumitomo Metal Mining also shifts to the method to a third of the production in second half of fiscal 2007 started April. Pan Pacific Copper started the method at Hitachi plant in 2002. The firm improved the productivity per square meter by 1.2 times and increased the annual output capacity by 37,000 tonnes to 217,000 tonnes. The firm introduced the method fully to electrolytic copper production at Saganoseki. The firm also considers introducing the method to Tamano of Hibi Kyodo Smelting. Sumitomo Metal Mining introduces the method for no.2 electrolytic copper plant. Mitsubishi Materials already introduced the method for Indonesian copper smelter. They have used copper plate for the negative electrode. However, they have to produce the negative electrode to ship them as copper ingot. The permanent cathode method uses stainless plate as the negative electrode and the smelters don’t have to ship the stainless plate. With the new method, they could reduce the operating cost by 20%.