Swapping aluminium for copper will maintain China's resources, group says

Promoting the use of aluminium to save copper would be conducive to maintaining the security of China's copper resource, the head of the country's nonferrous industry group said on Wednesday.

China depends on overseas imports for 60% of its aluminium resources, as opposed to 70% of its copper resources, and finding ways to use more aluminium would save money and provide more security for the smelting industry, said Ge Honglin, chairperson of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association (CNIA), at the Asia Copper Week conference.

“In terms of resources, copper is more precious and scarce compared to aluminium,” Ge said.

“The price of copper is 77,000 yuan [R192,560] a ton and the price of aluminium is 21,000 yuan [R52,517], so using aluminium instead of copper already presents economic advantages.”

In his speech, Ge emphasised the need for mergers and the reorganisation of copper refining capacity in China, the world's biggest consumer of the red metal used in electronics.

Ge also called for local governments to assist China's copper recycling industry to address bottlenecks within the domestic system.

He forecast that China's recycled copper volume will rise from 2.5 million metric tons in 2024 to 2.7-million tons in 2025 and 3.5-million tons by 2030.

Recycled copper can be used to replace some demand for copper concentrate, lightly processed raw ore used by smelters to convert to finished metal, and can also be used by downstream copper users, reducing the need for both raw material and refined copper supply.

“Copper refiners should enhance the use of recycled raw materials,” he said.

Reuters