Chinalco could invest $426 million in Suriname bauxite project
If approved by parliament, Chinalco could begin construction by the middle of next year.
BEIJING, April 27 (Reuters) – Jiangxi Copper Co, one of China’s top copper producers, posted its biggest quarterly profit in 3-1/2 years on Friday thanks to higher copper prices.
Net income for the first quarter of 2018 came in at 766 million yuan ($120.9 million), up 41.5 percent from a year earlier, the Nanchang-based company said in a filing to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The result is the highest in a quarter for Jiangxi Copper since the third quarter of 2014, when it made 1.13 billion yuan, according to Reuters records.
First-quarter revenues stood at 50.61 billion yuan, up 13.3 percent from 44.68 billion yuan a year earlier.
Benchmark three-month copper prices on the London Metal Exchange are trading at around $6,800 a tonne, having rallied around 16.5 percent since the end of March 2017.
Prices have fallen by around 6.7 percent since the start of this year, however, amid concerns over cooling demand growth in China, the world’s top consumer of the red metal.
Jiangxi Copper, an integrated producer owning both mines and smelters, plans to raise production of copper cathodes, which are used to make products such as copper wire and cable, by 3.6 percent this year to 1.42 million tonnes.
In its Friday filing, the company did not provide a production figure for the first quarter.
($1 = 6.3358 Chinese yuan renminbi)
(Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Adrian Croft)
