Copper Wire and Cable Production Continues Under Pressure, Holidays and High Copper Prices Disrupt Production [SMM Wire and Cable Market Weekly Review]

      This week (January 2–8), the SMM copper wire and cable enterprise operating rate was 56.58%, down 2.37 percentage points MoM and down 12.73 percentage points YoY. Specifically, the New Year's holiday disrupted normal production pace, and after the holiday, copper prices broke through and fluctuated at highs, significantly suppressing downstream market purchase willingness, leading to persistently weak new orders, with market orders mainly consisting of scattered small orders. By sector, demand across various fields showed no significant improvement due to the impact of high copper prices; only the State Grid had periodic restocking operations, but these were mainly just-in-time procurement, with limited order scale. Inventory side, affected by wild swings in copper prices during the week, enterprises generally adopted a wait-and-see attitude earlier and conducted cautious just-in-time restocking only during copper price pullbacks; this week, the raw material inventory ratio decreased by 2.66 percentage points. Finished product inventories showed a clear inventory buildup trend; although enterprises prioritized production cuts for destocking, the overall destocking speed was relatively slow, with the finished product inventory ratio only slightly decreasing by 0.56 percentage points MoM. Looking ahead to next week, market orders showed slight improvement signs after copper prices pulled back, but downstream purchasing sentiment remained cautious. Therefore, SMM expects the copper wire and cable operating rate to rise 0.57 percentage points to 56.88% next week (January 9–15).