China's copper concentrate imports in 2023 are likely to increase in 2023 from a year earlier, despite Beijing's push to boost copper scrap consumption at smelters to achieve its target of peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.
There would be a limited increase in production for domestically produced copper concentrate in China. The new 400,000 t/yr copper smelting facility at China's Daye Non-ferrous started feed supplies on 23 October and is on track to ramp up production next year. This is the biggest demand driver for copper concentrate imports in the coming year.
Meanwhile, a revision in export regulations in Europe has cast a dark cloud over China's future copper scrap imports. This may force Chinese copper smelters to switch to importing more copper concentrate rather than scrap. The European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety on 1 December voted to adopt regulations that will place restrictions on exports of scrap metal from the EU to non-OECD countries, but resisted pressure to adopt similar restrictions on exports to OECD importers.
The revised regulations to the European Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) will allow exports of non-hazardous waste only for recovery, under which classification ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal falls under EU law, to non-OECD countries that apply for consent and demonstrate their ability to treat the waste sustainably by way of third-party audits. Some non-OECD countries including India, Pakistan and China are major consumers of the EU's ferrous, aluminium, copper and stainless steel scrap.
The EU is a leading supplier of copper scrap in China, with the volume from January-October accounting for 17.5pc of the country's total copper scrap imports at 1.47mn t during the period, customs data show, higher than the 17.1pc recorded in January-October 2021, with imports at 1.37mn t.
China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Ecology and Environment on 15 November jointly issued a "non-ferrous metals industry carbon peaking implementation programme" that aims for the country's recycled copper and aluminium production to reach 4mn t and 11.5mn t, respectively. China produced 2.26mn t of recycled copper last year, according to China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association.
China's 15 major copper smelters in May 2021 agreed to cut concentrate purchases by 8.8pc on the year because of climate change mitigation strategies and depressed treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs), but buoyant demand in 2021 bolstered the country's copper concentrate imports by 7.6pc from a year earlier.
China imported 21.77mn t of copper concentrate in 2020, 23.43mn t in 2021 and 20.8mn t in January-October 2022, which was up by 8.5pc from 19.2mn t in the same period of 2021, customs data show.
