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It was reported that Shandong Xiangrui Copper Semis Co. Ltd. bought a new 320,000t/y copper semis production facility into full operation during late August. The plant produces a variety of products. It's capacity includes 95,000t/y of copper wirerod, 100,000t/y of copper strip, 20,000t/y of overhead railway conductors and 10,500t/y of bare copper wire. Contirod continuous casting technology from Germany will be used for the process.

SMS Meer of Germany announced on 8th November that it had received an order from Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group for a CONTIROD casting and rolling plant for the production of copper wirerod. The new wirerod line can produces 225,000t/y of copper wirerod from cathode. The news follows an announcement from Tongling Nonferrous Metals that it is planning to expand production in its smelting division to become China's largest copper smelter. The company, which produces copper cathode as well as end products such as semis and rod, said it is planning to raise smelting output by 400,000t/y. This is equivalent to 50% of production and would take total output to 1.2Mt/y, overtaking China's current largest smelter Jiangxi Copper.

Yangzhou Baosheng Copper Industry, a large Chinese manufacturer of wire and cable, announced on 12th December that it had placed an order with Germany's SMS Meer for a CONTIROD system to be installed at its plant in Baoying, Jiangsu province. The new system, which has a capacity of 48t/h, will come into action in 2014 and will enable the company to expand its range of products.

According to an annual survey from Antaike, operating rates at Chinese copper fabricators were on average 2.66 percentage points lower in 2012 than in 2011. The sector that saw the largest slow down in utilisation was the copper tube sector, down 7.27 percentage points in 2012, due to low operating rates in air conditioner sector denting the demand for copper tube in China. Wire manufacturers and foil manufacturers were reported to have fared better in 2012, with utilisation rates rising modestly.

Henan-based Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube (Henan Golden Dragon), the world's largest manufacturer of commercial copper tube, will open a new 30,000t/y high precision copper tube factory in July 2013. Henan Golden Dragon begun production of the facility in May 2012 and have invested a total of RMB 380M (USD60.5M). The factory will produce high precision copper tube.

An SCR-type casting and rolling facility for the production of copper wire rod is to be introduced at Nippon Mining & Metals' Chinese JV. Due to start in August and complete in 2010, the facility will expand output capacity by 50% to 300,000 tonnes per year with ¥3 billion capital expenditure. The JV, Chang Zhou Jin Yuan, will cease its current Contirod-type facility when the SCR-facility comes on line. Nippon decided to undertake the capacity expansion to meet strong demand from infrastructure construction in China.