Operating Rate at Chinese Copper Wire Rod Plants to Fall in December

CATL started trial production at its new cell plant in Debrecen, Hungary on September 22, commissioning its first two cell lines to validate equipment and processes ahead of mass production. The EUR 7.34 billion, 221-hectare site is planned for 100 GWh of annual capacity, making it CATL's largest manufacturing base outside China. Module assembly has run there since autumn 2024 with 537,000 units produced to date. Located next to BMW's Debrecen vehicle plant, the facility will supply BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis and Volkswagen. The ramp from modules to cells marks a milestone in European battery localization and will lift copper demand for battery foil, busbars and plant power infrastructure.

The AI-server PCB boom is straining high-end copper foil supply. Industry sources cited by Digitimes put the 2026 supply gap for HVLP4 ultra-low-profile copper foil at about 1,500 tonnes, widening to 2,500 tonnes in 2027. NVIDIA is bypassing CCL makers to lock foil and glass-fabric capacity more than a year ahead, pressing Google, AWS and Meta to coordinate procurement, while laminate makers have moved to quota-based allocation. Mitsui Mining and Taiwan's Co-Tech control 80-90 percent of effective high-end supply, with equipment, formulation and qualification barriers capping expansion. Soochow Securities projects HVLP3-4 foil demand rising from 24,000 tonnes in 2026 to about 50,000 tonnes in 2027 and nearly 70,000 tonnes in 2028, steadily raising copper intensity in the AI compute chain.

Australian AI-infrastructure firm Firmus announced strategic agreements with Meta for GPU compute capacity at its NVIDIA DSX-based AI factories in Southeast Asia, covering contracted capacity plus expansion options to support Meta's AI research and model training. Meta already operates NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 systems at Firmus' Melbourne AI factory, the largest Blackwell Ultra deployment in the Southern Hemisphere. After signing a multi-year deal with OpenAI for two Malaysian AI factories earlier this month, Firmus' total contracted capacity exceeds 900 MW across seven AI-factory projects in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and it is preparing an IPO of up to USD 5 billion. Building out this capacity implies significant copper demand in power distribution, busbars and liquid-cooling systems.