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Steel Dynamics Inc. (SDI) is facing community opposition to a planned copper rod facility in New Haven, Ind., that could delay the start of full construction at the greenfield site. The Indiana Department of Environmental Management's Office of Air Quality will hold a public meeting on 15th September about the plant, a joint venture with La Farga Group, after receiving almost 80 public comments from residents with environmental concerns.

Amer International Group has signed an agreement with the local government of Wuwei County in Chaohu, Anhui Province, to build a 250,000t/y copper rod plant in Wuwei. Fixed-asset investment in the project is reportedly RMB2.5B. Once in operation, the plant will be the biggest of its kind in Asia.

Outokumpu, a leading stainless steel fabricator, announced on 1st November that it has sold its 50% shareholding in Nordic Brass Gusum, a brass rod mill located in Sweden, to the operative management. The brass rod mill has a production capacity of 40,000t/y, employs 150 workers and in 2010 achieved a turnover of EUR110M. Outokumpu still owns another brass mill in the Netherlands, Copper LDM B.V., which has a production capacity of around 30,000t/y.

"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"

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.

* Aurubis Group, the large German copper smelter and semis producer, announced on 13th December that its operating earnings before tax for the fiscal year Q4 2011-Q3 2012, had increased to EUR296M from EUR292M the previous year (US$385.5M from US$380.3M). Despite the headline increase in profitability, which was driven by the group's smelting unit, Aurubis reported that profits from "copper products were considerably down on the prior-year level due to weak markets for rod and shapes." Operating profits at the group's semis business fell to EUR10.1M this fiscal year from EUR49.7M the prior year (US$13.2M from US$64.7M), with Aurubis citing "the economic influences of the European debt crisis" as a factor weighing on the demand for copper products. Aurubis reported that copper tube output had fallen by 18% to 646,000t in 2011/2012 from 785,000t in 2010/11, copper continuous cast shapes output had fallen by 17% to 164,000t from 197,000t , whilst the output of flat rolled products fared better with output roughly unchanged at 217,000t.

According to data from the Copper and Brass Servicenter Association(CBSA), total shipments from US brass and copper mills slipped 1.1% y-o-y in 2012, to 261.5Mlb (118,600t). Data from November had indicated that year-to-date shipments were roughly unchanged from 2011, however, a 16.9% m-o-m drop in shipments in December tipped total shipments into contraction territory for the year. In general, copper semis shipments were stronger than alloy shipments, with copper rod shipments up 8.3% in 2012, to 64.4Mlb (29,200t). Total alloy shipments fell 5.4% in 2012, to 139.6Mlb (63,300t), with 300-series alloy RBS shipments declining by the largest amount in the year, falling 11.9% to 61.3Mlb (27,800t).

According to Aurubis Buffalo's vice president of marketing and sales, demand for brass mill products in the US has been strong so far in 2013. The company has seen a strong pickup in demand from sectors including ammunition, electronics, heating and HVAC so far this year. The executive said that lead times at service centers were longer than eight weeks in January for flat-rolled products and that the company is considering hiring more workers at its Buffalo operation to meet the demand.

The demand for copper flat-rolled products softened coming into March after a strong start to the year, according to sources at some US service centers. Lead times for some copper products, which were quoted as long as eight weeks back in January, may have shorted to six weeks or less in March according to an American Metal Market report. A drop in demand for appliances and connectors market was noted by some sources contacted by AMM, but sales of ammunition, a key end-use of flat-rolled brass, have remained buoyant since the start of the year.

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.

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.

Wieland-Werke AG, the German fabricator of brass mill products, reported sales of 475,000t, down by 0.4% y-o-y in financial year 2010/2011. Turnover increased by 24% y-o-y to reach €3,287M and profits also rose to €45M in 2010/2011 after a loss of €6M in the previous year. The rise in turnover was mainly attributed to rising metals prices, while the company said that the increase in profits was caused by a product mix composed of a larger amount of value-added products. Wieland noted strong demand in the first six months of the period, which was offset by the Euro debt-crisis as a driver of significantly weaker demand in Europe during the latter half of the fiscal year. In addition, the company saw a fall in demand in Asia from Spring 2011 and continued very low demand in North America. End-use consumer demand was weak and impacted the electronics and electrical engineering sectors as well as vehicle production. Mechanical engineering was considered to be a bright spot in fiscal year 2010/2011.

Wieland-Werke AG, the German fabricator of brass mill products, stated that demand in 2012 began weakly. After January, orders rose only slightly, but demand from important markets in Asia and Europe declined, principally attributed to cautious buying as fears remained over the impact of the course of the euro debt crisis in 2012. In addition, the company is experiencing reduced demand from the electronics industry in Asia following the closure of several plants affected by the tsunami in Japan and flooding in Thailand. Wieland has also not seen any growth support from North America and is uncertain about the global outlook for demand in 2012 due to the unpredictability of the euro debt crisis.

Eastern Copper, a copper wirerod producer based in Shandong Province, announced that it has recently commissioned its second continuous copper wire rod plant. The plant will be able to produce 320,000t/y of high quality copper wirerod at full capacity.

KME Group, a European producer of copper rolled products and tubes, announced that company revenues (excluding the cost of raw materials) declined by 11% y-o-y to reach €376M. KME mainly attributes the decline to weak macroeconomic conditions caused by the European sovereign debt crisis which began in H2 2011. Copper price volatility has also led to cautious buying of copper products. The company said that it experienced a continued downturn in sales within the industrial sector (approximately 75% of revenue) in Italy and Spain in H1 2012, while France held-up better. Sales contracted period-on-period and year-on-year in the brass rods segment and in rolled products for the construction market. In addition, shipments to domestic appliance and air conditioner manufacturers were stagnant y-o-y in H1. A bright spot was seen in sales of automotive and mechanical components as well as products associated with the electrical industry.

Jinchuan Group began construction of its 300,000t/y continuously cast copper rod and rolled products operation. The company is China's third largest producer of refined copper, with a reported capacity of 600,000t/y.

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.

Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. said that it had recently started mass production of aluminium wire harnesses, which it promised can reduce weight by 40-50% from traditional copper harnesses aiding weight reduction in automobiles. It will supply wire rods from a factory in Indonesia to manufacture and assemble the electric wires in a subsidiary in Vietnam and it will manufacture harnesses used in the door section. The news follows Furukawa's early December announcement of an agreement to acquire the automotive connector business of Mitsubishi Cable Industries, Ltd. Furukawa said that it expected the acquisition to aid the development of new aluminium wire harness technologies and high voltage cables for electric and hybrid vehicles.

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.

Quanwei (Tongling) Copper Technology Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of the copper wirerod and wires producer, Hong Kong Zhangwei International Group Company, recently begun installation of a second phase of new production lines at its facility in Tongling Economic and Technological Development Zone. The company completed the first stage of copper semis processing units in 2009 and upon completion of the new expansion, the factory will have capacity to produce 120,000t/y of copper wire, 30,000t/y of fine copper wire, 600,000km/y of special cables and 50,000t/y of polymer material. Quanwei (Tongling) expects to achieve revenues of RMB12.0B once the operation is producing at full capacity.