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Xinxing Zhunguan, a Zhejiang-based manufacturer of copper wirerod, plans to increase production at its facility to 165,000t in 2013, up by 10% from 150,000t in 2012. Despite low profitability at Chinese wirerod producers, an official at the company said Xinxing Zhunguan still plans to increase output in 2013 in order to enhance competitiveness. The company said it expects orders to be subdued in the run up to the Chinese Lunar New Year, but then expects a strong rebound after the holiday period. This is consistent with another report on 11th January from Reuters which cited several Chinese copper traders as expecting the period between now and the holiday to be quiet, followed by a strong rebound.

According to an official from Chinalco Kunming Copper Co., the Chinese wirerod manufacturer, the company produced 10,000t of copper wirerod in March, up from 7,000t in February. The official said that March's output of wirerod had risen because of a week-long shutdown in February for the Chinese New Year. However, output had still fallen short of the company's 13,000t target. Chinalco Kunming plans to produce 150,000t of wirerod in 2013, utilising around 68% of its 220,000t/y capacity. According to a report from Asian Metal, the company has recently settled its long-term charges for processing 8.0mm wirerod at RMB1,150/t (US$183/t).

Wirerod production at Hebei Dawufeng Copper has been temporarily suspended since early April in order to carry out maintenance. The company elected to halt production for a month in order to carry out equipment maintenance, owing to the currently sluggish wirerod market. Production at the plant, which has a wirerod production capacity of 100,000 t/y is scheduled to re-start in early May.

Dongguan Huaxin Wire & Cable Co. Ltd. produced 4,433 tonnes of 8mm copper wirerod in April, down by 11.2% m-o-m. In the four months to April, the company produced 15.2kt of copper wirerod whilst it sold 13.9kt. About 78% of production in March and April was exported. Dongguan Huaxin's annual capacity of copper wirerod amounts to 72kt per annum.

A Shanghai Metals Market survey of Chinese wirerod producers showed that operating rates at 21 domestic producers, with capacity of 3.5Mt/y, fell to 69.02% in October, a decrease of 2.33% m-o-m, and 14.4% y-o-y. The report cited the extended October national day holiday and maintenance at one large domestic wirerod producer as reasons for the decline. The release also showed that wirerod producers held lower raw materials stocks in October at 16.02% of production, down from 17.21% of production in September. Finally producers' inventories of finished goods increased to 15.80% of production in October from 5.58% of production in September as the above-mentioned large wirerod producer increased stocks prior to its maintenance shutdown.

Jiangsu Jiangrun Copper Co., Ltd. is planning to produce 240,000 tonnes of copper wirerod in 2009. The company is making use of the newly installed SCR line, which is gradually ramping up to its full capacity of 350,000 tonnes of copper wirerod. Jiangsu Jiangrun is a subsidiary of Jiangsu Jinhui Group, a major copper conductor producer in China established in 1994.

Chinalco Kunming, a Yunnan-based producer of low-oxygen copper wirerod, announced that it will increase its output of copper wirerod to 150,000t in 2013, up from 40,000t in 2012. The company started trial production in 2012 and operated below capacity for most of the year, with output of 5,000t in November and 4,000t in December. The company said its facilities have an production capacity of 220,000t at full capacity.

A recent survey by the Shanghai Metals Market of 21 major Chinese copper wirerod producers, with a total capacity of 3.4Mt/y, showed that operating rates in February fell to 57.8% as facilities slowed production during the Chinese New Year holiday. Wirerod producers reduced output as downstream demand from cable makers was weak in February, according to an SMM report with the survey. Many migrant workers return to their homes during the period, forcing factories to shut or reduce working hours. The SMM survey also revealed that producer's inventories of raw materials for the production of wirerod had increased to 22.6% of production in February, up 7.3 percentage points from January.

Wuxi Lineo Science and Technology Group began construction of a 60,000t/y copper wirerod mill in Wuxi City, Jiangsu province. Start-up is expected to take place by October 2012. The company will also invest in a second phase expansion project that will involve the addition of another 60,000t/y wirerod production line by November 2014. The plant will be primarily fed with refined copper cathode sourced from Tongling Nonferrous Metals in Anhui province and is designed to serve wirerod to domestic wire and cable producers unless market prices become sufficiently attractive to allow for export. Wuxi Lineo Group is a private enterprise with downstream manufacturing subsidiaries producing cable, hardware, mechanical and electrical products.

It was reported that Southwire sold a second copper wirerod system to South Korean Taihan Electric Wire Co. Southwire will engage in the design of all the operating equipment for Taihan Electric, including the installation of its SCR 6000 system, which is capable of producing 260,000 tonnes of copper wirerod per annum at a rate of 40 tonnes per hour. The fist copper wirerod system was delivered to Taihan Electric in 1980. In total, Southwire has sold more than 80 continuous-cast SCR systems worldwide.

Elektrokoppar said that payment terms with end-users need to be shortened due to record high copper prices. The Swedish copper wirerod producer commented that fabricators cannot act as bankers and have to shorten payment terms by nearly 50% compared to last year. The company decided to reduce production of copper wirerod by 20% from 2010 in order to cut the stock level needed to be financed. The main wirerod mill operations have gone down from four shifts to three. At the current copper price levels, Elektrokoppar decided to cover the north European market than selling to other markets with high freight rates and high financing costs.

It was reported that Steel Dynamics Inc., the US based semis fabricator, has begun construction of its new US$39M copper wirerod manufacturing facility in Indiana, US. The company expects the plant, which marks its entry into the copper wirerod market, to have a production capacity of 180Mlbs/y and to commence operations in Q2 2012. The facility is owned by SDI LaFarga LLC, a JV between Steel Dynamics and LaFarga Group who hold stocks of 55% and 45% respectively. Indiana is a notable location within the US wirerod market as it is home to consumers, Rea Magnet Wire Co. Inc. and CerroWire LLC.

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.

A survey of 21 major Chinese wirerod producers, with total capacity of 3.67Mt/y, showed that the average operating rate increased to 74.29% in November, up 5.27 percentage points from October. The survey cited an increased demand for wire from the power generation and construction sectors, as well as a roll off of October's seasonal effects as reasons for the increase. The overall level of utilisation in November 2012 was down 12.51 percentage points from a rate of 86.80% in November 2011. The survey also reported that raw materials inventories at Chinese wirerod producers had decreased to 13.98% of production, stating that most producers are not expecting large increases in the copper price, and with tighter cash flows, prefer to hold smaller inventories.

An official from SDI La Farga LLC's said on 11th December that the company is producing limited amounts of wirerod at its new US $39M plant in New Haven, Indiana. The new facility, a joint venture between Spain's La Farga Group and Steel Dynamics Inc, produces wirerod from number 2 scrap copper rather than cathode. The company official said "we've produced quality rod and are in the process of getting approval of customers and we have done so with several customers." He added that plant officials are "waiting for more customer orders to start producing more".

Anhui Jincheng, the Shanghai-listed producer of copper PSSF, said on 26th March that it produced 93,872t of copper PSSF in 2012, a 13% y-o-y increase from 2011. Despite the increase in output, the company made a net loss of RMB57M in 2012 from a profit of RMB24M in 2011 (loss of US$9M from a profit of US$3.8M). Remarking on the results the company said that "uncertainties in the global economy, the euro debt crisis, plus the weak Chinese economy, has negatively impacted demand by the downstream processing sector last year."

Talking at the annual CESCO/CRU World Copper Conference, CRU Principal Consultant Vivienne Lloyd said that up to 2Mt of copper demand could be lost over the next five years due to substitution and consolidation amongst Chinese semis producers. Lloyd said that the areas under the greatest threat from substitution are the automotive wiring harness sector and the HVAC sector. However, CRU believes that the aluminium/copper price ratio is likely to have peaked in 2012 at around 4:1, and will fall back gradually to 2017 reaching 3:1, which should relieve some of the substitution pressures.

Russia Copper Corp. (RCC), a Russia-based integrated producer of copper cathode and wirerod, said that there will be a steep rise in exports of copper cathode from 2015. The company expects Russia to cancel its 10% (variable on copper price) export duty on copper cathodes from 2015 as a prerequisite for its accession to the World Trade Organisation. RCC added that the cost incurred in producing wirerod is around $130/t and the average cost to send it abroad in Q1 2012 was $250/t, whereas the estimated cost of sending cathode abroad was $850/t in that period.

Antaike reported that newly added copper wirerod capacity amounted to 2.55Mt/y in 2011 but is expected to rise at a slower rate between 2012 and 2014. Total additional capacity is currently projected to be 3.89Mt/y across that date range. Investors are attracted to copper wirerod projects because of the combination of high yield, low capital cost and a perception of good demand prospects for the domestic power cable industry.

It was reported that a new criterion for the legislative standard which affects copper wirerod fabricators has been approved by a committee of experts and has been submitted to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China for consideration. Industry sources have stated that there is an emphasis on driving domestic innovation to lift the quality and utilisation rates of continuous casting and rolling mill technology, which is currently lagging behind higher performance, expensive foreign equipment. Approximately one third of copper scrap is used in the direct manufacture of copper and copper alloy wirerod and semis. However, it is thought that none of the 80 or so secondary copper rod manufacturers will meet the criteria outlined in the proposal.

Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., the Japanese integrated cablemaking company, announced plans to build a new copper wirerod plant in Thailand. The facility will add 17,000t/m of capacity to the company's current 20,000t/m, which is split between rod mills in Japan and Indonesia. Sumitomo intends to supply copper wirerod primarily for downstream processing into automotive wire harnesses and electric motors in order to meet growing demand from the emerging South East Asian car markets.

SDI-La Farga's joint venture wirerod project, which will have the capacity to produce 82,000t/y of copper wirerod once made fully operational after its scheduled Q2 2012 start-up, will use No. 2 Birch Cliff scrap as its primary feedstock. No. 2 Birch Cliff is a mix of wire and tubing with 96% copper content. This scrap material is popular amongst China copper consumers, fuelling speculation that the new US operation will lead to a narrowing of US scrap discounts and questioning whether it can compete in a market with a lower cathode-scrap margin.

Aurubis AG, the Germany-headquartered refined copper cathode and copper products fabricator, reported a weak performance in sales of copper products in the first quarter of this year. In Q1, the outputs of wirerod; pre-rolled strip; continuous cast shapes; rolled products and speciality wire reached 179,000t, 41,000t, 47,000t and 60,000t, down by 17% y-o-y, down by 15% y-o-y, up by 2% y-o-y and up by 329% y-o-y, respectively. Generally, the seasonal upswing in Q2 was weaker than expected, however, there was a mixture of performances in the sectors within each market, as some wirerod market sectors ordered strongly but European semi-fabricators and customers of strip and speciality wire continued to order shrinking quantities at late notice.

Aurubis reported a growth outlook for its copper products business unit. The company said that the performance of copper wirerod depends upon the progress of power grid expansion projects in Europe. The automotive sector is expected to continue to support growing wirerod sales for the next few months, however the enamelled wire industry is expected to remain weak attributed to poor demand in southern Europe. North American demand is anticipated to support growth in shipments of copper shapes as well as the company's market for flat copper products. In this regard, the US electronics and electrical industry, engine cooling and distribution segments are expected to continue improving. Stagnant European and Asian demand for flat copper products will partially undermine growth in North America. The company added that it does not anticipate the Asian copper products market to recover until the end of Summer 2012, at which time, demand in the US is expected to be good and demand from European-based operations will be recovering.

Siemens VAI Metals Technologies received an order from Southwire Company to supply the equipment for Chinalco's new copper wirerod mill. The plant will be located on a greenfield site in Kunming, southwest China, and is expected to be commissioned in late 2011. Siemens will be responsible for the engineering, manufacturing and commissioning of all the equipment for the SCR 4500 wirerod mill. Capacity will amount to 35 tonnes per hour.