Average Operating Rate of Copper Rod Producers Dip 7.58 Percentage Points last Week

SHANGHAI, Dec 26 (SMM) - According to SMM research, the average operating rate of key large and medium-sized copper rod plants in China stood at around 60.4% last week, down 7.58 percentage points WoW (Note: SMM surveyed 21 producers with a total production capacity of 7.47 million mt). 

The increase in the number of COVID-infected people cast a greater impact on the copper processing enterprises. Last week, many copper rod companies said that their new orders shrank significantly, and the downstream companies’ pick-up of goods also slowed down. Besides, many employees caught the COVID-19 virus, which affected the production of the pace copper rod companies to a certain extent. In addition, near the end of the year, the pace of receiving orders continued to slow down with more copper rod companies beginning their year-end settlement. What’s more, some small and medium-sized wire and cable companies have started their Chinese New Year holidays beforehand. It is expected that the consumption of copper cathode rods before the Chinese New Year will hardly be optimistic.