Stagnant Copper Scrap Trading around Tokyo

Copper scrap trading is stagnant around Tokyo. Both copper scrap generation and the demand from copper fabricators are decreasing. A large scrap dealer source said their recent dealing volume is almost half compared with a year earlier. Dealers cannot increase copper scrap inventory actively with an expectation that copper fabricators may decrease scrap procurement more during January-March.

There are few aggressive sales of copper scrap in the market after the price dropped down in October. Copper scrap supply maintains tight. Meanwhile, scrap dealers are shrinking copper scrap quota against copper fabricators in and after October. The supply and demand are balanced at the low level. Many dealers’ trading volume is decreasing by several ten percent or 50% compared with the usual level.

Fabricators’ demand is remarkably weakening for brass turning scrap and bronze casting scrap. The demand seems not to recover in a short term. Fabricators’ procurement volume is expected to decrease even for high grade scrap such as new cutting brass and phosphor bronze scrap during January-March, though high grade scrap supply has kept relatively tight.

Under these conditions, copper scrap market price is lowering. No.1 copper wire scrap price is around 340 yen per kilogram in Tokyo. The past market price was around 360 yen per kg with the indicator of Japanese official copper ingot price at 420,000 yen per tonne.