Chengtun Mining Aims to Reduce Debt Ratio as Projects Progress and Cash Flow Strengthens

The operating rate of secondary copper rod was 11.83% in August 2026, higher than the expected 10.26%, up 1.57 percentage points MoM but down 16.5 percentage points YoY. In August 2026, the average price difference between copper cathode rod and secondary copper rod stayed high at 1,450-1,874 yuan/mt throughout the month. The average discount of secondary copper rod in Jiangxi against copper futures fluctuated between 722 yuan/mt and 1,418 yuan/mt,...

Rio Tinto said it has secured Indigenous consent for its Winu copper-gold project in Western Australia, allowing the project to move forward. The company said it has established a long-term partnership with Nyangumarta Warrarn Aboriginal Corporation (NWAC) covering development of the mine on Nyangumarta country. The agreement builds on a project planning agreement signed in 2023, setting out how Nyangumarta people and Rio Tinto will work together as planning advances, including measures to avoid impacts on the environment and Indigenous cultural heritage.

At 9:58 on September 12, the core smelting furnace of the pyrometallurgy system at Yingkou Jianfa Shenghai Nonferrous Metals & Chemicals Co., Ltd.'s multi-metal recovery project was successfully ignited, officially entering the furnace drying stage and marking a key step toward full-line commissioning and production. Public information shows that the Yingkou Jianfa Shenghai polymetallic complex gold-silver ore comprehensive recovery technology upgrade, relocation, and expansion project uses copper concentrates as its main raw material, with an overall planned capacity of 600,000 mt/year of copper cathode to be built in two phases, with capacity of 300,000 mt/year in each phase. Phase I is designed to produce 300,000 mt/year of copper cathode and 1.18 million mt/year of sulphuric acid, along with supporting systems for smelting, converting, anode refining, electrolysis, slag beneficiation, and precious metal recovery. After this ignition, the project will carry out standardized furnace drying and hot-state integrated trial runs across the entire system to verify equipment, instruments, interlocks, and automatic control systems. The project has not yet formally started raw material feeding and production; after furnace drying and system commissioning are completed, it will further advance the commissioning of Phase I's 300,000 mt/year copper cathode capacity. If the project is successfully brought into production, it is expected to increase copper smelting capacity in North China and further boost domestic demand for copper concentrate raw materials.