It says that demand for aluminium cable, especially in the power industry, is already rising and “certain to increase in the coming years” – at the expense of copper.
“There will be substitution, and it will have an impact on the market,” said Christophe Allain, the company’s corporate purchasing director for non ferrous metals, addressing the Cesco copper conference in Chile earlier this year.
“We have customers who in the past thought the cost differential between the two metals would not be sustainable [and so stuck with copper]. But now
they ask directly for an aluminium cable design.”
This is not Nexans necessarily talking its book – the company manufactures both copper and aluminium cable.
One area where substitution is likely to increasingly occur is in car wiring. Industrial copper cabling could be switched to aluminium in the railway, aeronautics and wind farm sectors. But the biggest threat to copper is in the power sector.