The price of copper declined for a fifth day in a row on Thursday despite trade data showing Chinese imports of the orange metal growing at a record-setting pace.<\/p>\n
Copper for delivery in March hit a low of $2.7535 per pound ($6,070 a tonne) in early trading on the Comex market in New York, down more than 3% in a week.<\/p>\n
China consumes half the world’s copper, and trade data released on Thursday showed the country’s copper imports were up sharply in January.<\/p>\n
Shipments of unwrought copper came in at 479,000 tonnes last month, up 14% from December and nearly 9% from a year ago. At the current pace annual imports of refined copper are on course to top 2018’s record 5.3m tonnes.<\/p>\n Imports of copper concentrate surged 17% from a year ago to 1.9m tonnes last month. January cargoes were the second-highest monthly total on record and on an annualized basis concentrate imports could exceed 22m tonnes in 2019, beating the record set last year of 19.7m tonnes.<\/p>\n China put in place a complete ban on certain types of scrap copper imports at the start of 2019 on top of a 25% tariff on imports from the United States, one of its main suppliers, instituted in August.<\/p>\n Copper has declined by 17% from its June 2018 high over worries of a slowdown in China and the impact of a trade war with the US, but the longer term prospects for the metal remain rosy.<\/p>\n A panel of analysts polled by FocusEconomics sees copper averaging $6,500 a tonne in the final quarter of 2019, before rising to $6,824 a year later.<\/p>\n The post Copper price slides despite Chinese imports at record pace<\/a> appeared first on MINING.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" US-China trade spat benefitting copper miners as tariffs on scrap imports boost concentrate shipments 17% to nearly 2m tonnes.<\/p>\n The post Copper price slides despite Chinese imports at record pace<\/a> appeared first on 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an annualized basis concentrate imports could exceed 22m tonnes in 2019, beating the record set last year<\/q><\/p>\n