Consumption of Materials for Copper Decreases by 8.6% from the Last Month

According to nonferrous metal supply and demand statistics, METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) announced, consumption of copper alloy scrap for smelter increased by 25% from the previous year to 35,392 tons, it rose on year-to-year basis for 14th straight months. But it decreased by 8.6% from 38,715 tons, the previous month level. Because electric copper production plan by copper smelters decreased by 4.6% from the previous year to 743,496 tons due to effect by furnace improvement in some smelter, consumption of copper alloy scrap used as coolant decreased. And in the market, generation of scrap keeps low level and import item is difficult to get because of cheap yen. These also affected the result.