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In an interview ahead of the CESCO/CRU world copper conference, Aurubis AG CEO Peter Willbrandt said that the company's US business is seeing the best flow of orders in 18 months and that the company's order book is full through May. The CEO said that the US has improved more than Europe and that Aurubis is still waiting for a stronger pickup in China, where he believed there had been a 50,000t destock of cathode in the past few weeks. Commenting on price expectations, he said that he expects copper to trade between US$7,500-8,000/t this year.

Aurubis AG's Buffalo, N.Y. copper fabricating business unit (formerly owned by Luvata) announced an increase to the fabrication charges on its rolled product shipments, effective from 1st March. While the exact charge will vary by product, the average fabrication price will rise by 10%. The company has cited the long term rise in supply, maintenance, energy and health-care costs as reasons for the change.

According to Aurubis, copper demand from China will remain robust in H2 2012. The company expects copper demand to reach 8.4 Mt this year on the back of monetary easing and increased state investment on infrastructure and stimulus packages for copper-utilising industries.

Positive expectations for copper producers have been generated by the recent increases in copper prices that reached US$4,725/t on the LME on 17th April. In Germany, copper smelter Aurubis expects that backed by rising prices the company will achieve oparating profits in the current fiscal year. Due to writedowns, the group suffered net losses in Q1 2009. In Poland, copper miner KGHM said that higher than expected prices may support the company to surpass its forecast. As a result, the company is updating its budget assumptions.

Luvata has completed the sale of its rolled products division to Aurubis. Luvata will now focus its growth strategy on emerging markets and highly engineered products.

According to Aurubis, the largest producer of copper in Europe, copper prices will be supported by strong demand from China and Europe over the next year. The struggling mine supply of the metal will also help to sustain price levels. Aurubis believes that the recent drop in price was caused by a change in market sentiment rather than a physical fall in demand, although the company noted that some customers have become cautious when placing orders recently. Market insiders at the 2011 China International Mining Expo & Summit Forum supported the view of continuing robust demand. Some sources from the forum estimated Chinese demand for the metal to grow between 5% and 10% in 2012.

"Demand for copper from auto sector is ok, he said. "[Demand from] energy projects which have big consumption [of copper wire rod] have gone down, but there is no indication that it shall continue to fall," he said during the 10th Asia copper conference in Shanghai. On the contrary, there are a lot of European energy projects in the pipeline, while China is also witnessing good demand"