China’s General Administration of Customs has released provisional copper import data for June and H1 2024.

Unwrought copper imports (comprising refined metal, anode and blister, alloy ingots and semi-manufactures) edged lower by 3% year-on-year to 436kt in June, compared to 450kt in the same month of 2023. By contrast, copper concentrate imports surged 8.7% year-on-year to 2.31 Mt gross weight, versus 2.125 Mt a year earlier. This suggests the 11.5% year-on-year drop in May concentrate imports represented only a brief pause, while numerous smelters conducted coordinated maintenance shutdowns, in the face of plummeting spot TC/RCs.

In the first half of 2024, Chinese imports of concentrates rose by 3.5% year-on-year; inflows of anode and blister fell 10.6% and refined metal imports surged 13.8%. The biggest outlier of all was the 23% year-on-year surge in China’s imports of scrap in gross weight terms to 1.04 Mt compared to 0.85 Mt in the first half of 2024. Smelters, refineries and fabricators have been desperate to source foreign scrap to plug the gaps in their raw material needs and to boost profitability in the face of record low TC/RCs. Total Chinese copper imports in all forms increased by 7% year-on-year to 7.5 Mt copper content versus 7.0 Mt copper content in H1 2024. Given that Chinese output of semi-manufactures only rose by 0.6% year-on-year in Jan-May 2024 - after plunging by 11.1% in May - the only real question to be asked and answered is: why?