Copper price edges down to two-week low amid demand uncertainty
The metal headed for a third daily decline, with copper miners also under pressure as a risk-off mood took hold in broader equity markets.
Pan Pacific Copper (PPC) plans to consign production of 291,900 metric tons of refined copper to its parent firms’ smelters in the second half of the 2023/24 financial year, up 0.3% from a year earlier, Japan’s biggest supplier of the metal said on Friday.
The country’s second half falls between October and March.
PPC is 67.8% owned by JX Metals Corp, a unit of Eneos Holdings Inc, and 32.2% held by Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co Ltd.
PPC outsources smelting and refining operations to its parent companies’ plants. It procures raw materials and sells the refined metals.
JX Metals, which owns two smelters, plans to conduct scheduled maintenance at its Saganoseki Smelter and Refinery in southern Japan from late October for about a month, according to a PPC spokesperson.
Mitsui Mining’s Tamano Smelter in western Japan also plans a short turnaround in early December, he said.
Following are details of the company’s consigned output plan, with comparisons against estimated production in the first half of the 2023/24 year and actual production in the second half of the 2022/23 financial year, which ended on March 31.
| H2 FY23/24 | H1 FY23/24 | H2 FY22/23 | |
| Copper | 291,900 | 307,900 | 291,100 |
(By Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Sohini Goswami)
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