April Copper Plate/Sheet and Strip Operating Rate Hit 5-Year High

On August 14, Nan Ya issued another price increase notice. Driven by rising raw material costs for copper foil, fiberglass cloth, and resin, as well as tight supply and demand in electronic materials fueled by AI computing demand, prices of copper clad laminates and base materials will be raised by 20% effective September 1. Nan Ya stated that the electronic materials industry is currently in a golden cycle, with capital expansion by US cloud vendors and AI server demand driving demand for mid-to-high-end materials, while limited new capacity has created a supply-demand gap. The news pushed Nan Ya's stock to the daily limit intraday.

In terms of cable and wire inventories this week, constrained by high copper prices, cable and wire enterprises generally adopted a rigid-demand purchasing strategy, locking in prices for small restocking only during minor copper price pullbacks. As a result, raw material inventories edged down 0.49% month-on-month. To ease inventory pressure, downstream enterprises prioritized drawing down finished goods inventories, which fell 2.33% month-on-month. Looking ahead to next week, the weak demand pattern across all segments is unlikely to reverse, and the industry lacks short-term recovery momentum. Under the dual pressure of high copper prices and off-season demand, SMM expects the copper cable and wire operating rate to fall a further 1.18 percentage points month-on-month to 61.08% next week (August 14–August 20), representing a year-on-year decline of 7.8 percentage points.

This week (August 7–August 13), SMM's copper cable and wire enterprise operating rate came in at 62.25%, down 1.4 percentage points month-on-month and 7.05 percentage points year-on-year. Copper prices remained elevated throughout the week, continuing to suppress downstream purchasing enthusiasm. Combined with overall weak terminal orders and no substantive improvement on the demand side, the industry's production load continued to decline.