Copper advances to 12-week high on Thursday as China\u2019s $700 billion stimulus program focussed on so-called \u201cnew infrastructure\u201d and \u201cnew urbanization\u201d kicks into gear.<\/p>\n
Copper trading in New York jumped to $2.5025 a pound ($5,515 a tonne) in lunchtime trade, bringing the bellwether metal\u2019s gains since its mid-March low to just under 27%.<\/p>\n
BMO Capital Markets, a bank, in a research note points out that data from China\u2019s Ministry of Finance shows the value of special purpose bonds issued \u2013 destined for local government spending on infrastructure \u2013 has already surpassed the full year total in 2019.<\/p>\n
BMO says \u201cnew urbanization\u201d refers to refurbishing old urban housing stock, railways, airports, and upgrades to power grids and local utilities while \u201cnew infrastructure\u201d includes 5G networks (base stations are already being constructed at a clip of 10,000 a week), ultra-high voltage power grids, EV charging stations, and data centers.<\/p>\n
Needless to say all of these investments need massive amounts of copper. <\/p>\n
China already consumes more than half the world\u2019s copper and its refineries are sucking in concentrate at higher rates than the record setting 2019 total of 22m tonnes. <\/p>\n
Now the country is going into overdrive. <\/p>\n
The latest SMM survey of copper wire and cable fabricators shows a rise in operating rates in May to 101.7%, the highest level in the history of this survey, BMO says. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s mainly thanks to purchases from the world\u2019s no 1 buyer of copper \u2013 China\u2019s State Grid \u2013 after Beijing massively inflated its budget. At the same time copper stocks held in the bonded zone are now below 250,000 tonnes for the first time in the past seven years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Copper now up 27% from covid-19 lows as China’s $700bn “new infrastructure” spending kicks into gear – 10,000 5G base stations are being built per week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2849,949,369],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188391"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1188391"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188421,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188391\/revisions\/1188421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1188391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1188391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1188391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}