Concentrating minds
Evidence of how desperate Chinese refiners are to source raw material is a report out Thursday by Bloomberg that BHP sold concentrate from Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, at spot treatment charges as low as $3 per tonne and refining charges of 0.3 cents a pound to at least one Chinese smelter. Benchmark annual contracts remain much higher but fell for the first time since 2021.
That constitutes at least a decade low – when prices declined to below $8,000 a tonne in 2023, treatment and refining charges – paid by miners to refiners to convert concentrate into metal – were north of $90 a tonne.
China would also increasingly compete with India for raw material in 2024 – just this week Adani said it started operating the first unit of its $1.2 billion Kutch Copper smelter. The plant will be the world’s largest single-location copper smelter with an initial capacity of 500kt a year and…
