Huadong Nonferrous Metal City's copper scrap supply decreased, can the throughput continue to grow? [SMM analysis]

From March 25 to March 29, the weekly average price of #1 copper cathode was 71923 yuan/mt, down 1.03% WoW; the weekly average price of bare bright copper in Huadong Nonferrous Metal City was 66370 yuan/mt, down 0.24% WoW; the weekly average price of thick cable stood at 66570 yuan/mt, down 0.24% on the week.

According to SMM, although copper prices moved lower last week, the most active contract was still above 72,000 yuan/ton. The enthusiasm of copper scrap sellers for shipments has not been affected by this. Therefore, the supply of copper scrap is still relatively abundant, and the purchase volume of copper scrap in Huadong Nonferrous Metal City continues to increase. Although some manufacturers said that the high absolute prices suppressed orders, due to the large number of manufacturers, the shipments of copper scrap in Huadong Nonferrous Metal City have not been affected. The market activity was still brisk, and the copper scrap throughput in Huadong Nonferrous Metal City continued to grow.

This week, according to a copper scrap trader in Huadong Nonferrous Metal City, the circulation of copper scrap in the market this week has begun to decrease compared with last week. This is not affected by price fluctuations, but mainly due to the limited supply of copper scrap sellers. The supply of goods continued to flow into the market, and not much scrap was recovered from processing companies. Therefore, the purchasing volume of copper scrap traders in Huadong Nonferrous Metal City will be reduced to a certain extent this week. In addition, many copper scrap traders are bearish on the market outlook and thus there will not be much inventory left. Downstream procurement demand is still strong. The bids of copper rod plants using copper scrap as raw material in Hubei are rising to snap up supply. Therefore, copper scrap shipments from Huadong Nonferrous Metal City continued to increase this week. To sum up, it is expected that the copper scrap throughput of Huadong Nonferrous Metal City this week will be the same or slightly lower than last week.