Reuters reported that China's production of refined copper rose in November to a record high for the second straight month as more domestic manufacturers turned to local smelters for supplies that traders said were cheaper than imports.
Analysts said that smelters also continued to take advantage of higher treatment and refining charges for raw material copper concentrate, which was also in plentiful supply due to a rise in imports.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that refined copper output rose 2.1% in November to 531,000 tonnes up from the previous record of 520,000 tonnes in October.
Traders said that some large smelters have also increased exports of refined copper cathode in the past few months and plan to ship out even more next year, encouraging higher production. China is the world's top consumer of industrial metals and also the biggest producer of most refined metals.
Demand for metals has weakened this year as China's economic growth slowed, creating record high stockpiles of copper and slowing the growth of imports of refined metals, alloys and semi finished copper products in October to their lowest in 15 months.
Mr Yang Xiaoguang analyst at Jinrui Futures said that "Most smelters have been doing alright this year even though consumption has slowed and their raw materials supplies have increased recently, encouraging them to produce more metal."
"Capacity of semi finished copper products has expanded this year, therefore the demand for refined copper has still increased. Refined metal output is likely to stay strong in December. Some analysts and traders had hoped Beijing's recent increase in infrastructure spending would boost copper demand in the fourth quarter of the year.
Lead - Refined lead production fell 2.8% from a record 471,000 tonnes in October to 458,000 tonnes in November as demand weakened from the battery sector the biggest user of the metal. Some lead acid batteries manufacturing plants built new capacity after the government closed outdated plants last year. The bulk of the capacity came on line in the first half of the year but demand has slowed, creating high inventories and forcing some factories to cut production.
A sales manager at a large lead smelter said that the sales of lead are still very bad. Battery plants have a lot of battery inventories both for electric bicycles and automobiles. We are pessimistic on demand for the next few months. Some lead smelters are certainly going to cut production.
Aluminium and Zinc - Output of primary aluminium dropped 3.3% to 1.67 million tonnes in November, reversing a 2.8% rise in the previous month even though a purchase by the State Reserves Bureau briefly supported domestic prices.
A manager at a large aluminium smelter said that there is so much aluminium in China, it is hard for prices to rise. Jinrui's Yang estimated more than 1.2 million tonnes of aluminium ingots were currently stored in private and public warehouses. These figures excluded state stocks. Some smelters have cut or shut production because of low prices. But the overall production is still higher than last year as new capacity came onstream.
China's State Reserves Bureau kicked off a metals buying spree last month, taking 100,000 tonnes each of aluminium and zinc from domestic smelters in a move that is aimed to assist smelters that have been hurt by weak demand.
