LS-Nikko Copper Inc. forecast copper demand in South Korea, Asia’s third-biggest metals buyer, may improve “gradually” later this year and in 2010 buoyed by economic stimulus measures and a shortage of scrap material.
“A lack of scrap copper and stimulus measures by governments in Korea and China are helping spur demand,” Steve Min, senior executive vice president at the world’s second- biggest copper concentrate buyer, said in an interview. Global economic spending plans may help boost prices of the metal later this year, he said, without giving a forecast.
Copper has jumped 50 percent in London this year and is the best performer on the UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index as China, the largest metals consumer, almost doubled imports. Shipments climbed because of the country’s 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus package, state buying and a lack of scrap material, traders have said.
Still, South Korean demand for the metal, used in pipes and wires, may decline 5 percent to 6 percent in 2009 from a year earlier to about 700,000 metric tons because of the economic slowdown, Min said in Seoul on May 8.
LS-Nikko is a joint venture between South Korea’s LS Corp. and a Japanese group led by Nippon Mining & Metals Co.
The copper smelting company, based in Onsan, South Korea is likely to maintain planned production cuts for the remainder of the year, he said. The company said in January it planned to cut this year’s output by 10 percent to 515,000 tons on slumping demand.
Source: Bloomberg
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