Copper Rod Plants Using Copper Scrap as Raw Materials Reported Low Availability of Cargoes at Best Price

Last week, prices of copper rod produced with copper scrap held flat from the previous week, narrowing their spread with copper cathode rod prices. This reduced the arbitrage opportunity for traders. At the same time, slow delivery-taking by downstream electric wire and cable plants grew finished product inventory of copper rod factories using copper scrap as raw materials. The supply of copper scrap remained ample. However, due to lower copper prices, traders of copper scrap refrained from selling. Meanwhile, poor profit prevented copper rod plants using copper scrap from raising their purchase prices for copper scrap, resulting in hard access to raw materials with best prices. Most of those plants could sustain production with existing inventories for around three days, down two days from a week earlier.