Copper Market Witnessed Minor Surplus until Nov '18

SEATTLE (Scrap Monster): The copper market recorded marginal surplus during the initial eleven-month period in 2018. The copper market surplus totaled 54kt during this period, in accordance with the latest statistics published by the World Bureau of Metal Statistics (WBMS). It must be noted that the world copper market had recorded a surplus of 120.2kt during the whole of 2017.

The world copper mine production totaled 18.94 million tonnes during Jan-Nov ’18. This was marginally higher when compared with the corresponding eleven-month period in 2017. The refined copper production too edged higher marginally by 1% during January to November in 2018 to total 21.51 million tonnes. The production recorded significant increases in Zambia and Chile. The Zambian production was up by 97 kt over the previous year, whereas the production by Chile too witnessed a rise of 45kt. Meantime, the EU-28 production dropped a bit by 1.4%.

The global consumption increased marginally by less than 1% from 21.26 million tonnes in Jan-Nov ’17 to 21.45 million tonnes during the similar period in 2018. The Chinese apparent demand during this period surged higher significantly by 6.5% to total 11.311 million tonnes. The EU demand at 3.108 million tonnes too was up slightly by 0.2% over the previous year.

The reported copper stocks declined in Nov ’18 to close at a level lower than end-2017 by 165kt. LME warehouses reported net deliveries of 2.5kt.

The monthly refined copper output totaled 1,988.5kt in Nov ’18, whereas the consumption hit 1,997.4kt.