Nippon Mining & Metals to Expand Downstream Business

Nippon Mining & Metals expects lower profit for the year to March 2008 due to higher raw materials cost and lower copper price after the record profit previous year. The president Masanori Okada said the firm tries to expand the businesses for electronic materials, metal manufacturing and recycling and environmental services to cover lower profit from smelting and mining resources. Mr. Okada said after merge of 3 metal firms in the group, the firm realized the synergy in platinum scrap recycling and rolled copper foil business. Isohara plant now uses platinum scrap from Saganoseki smelter to make sputtering target materials. The firm also increases the super flex treated rolled copper foil, HA foil with 12 micrometers thick for cell phone due to the higher flexibility realized through synergy between melting and rolling processes. Mr. Okada said the world copper supply is still tight when the inventory held by exchanges in London, New York and Shanghai is only 200,000 tonnes or 4 days world consumption. He said the tight metal supply is due to tight ore supply especially from Grasberg mine in Indonesia, which reduces the concentrate output by 800,000 tonnes to 2.7 million tonnes in the year from previous year. The 800,000 tonnes smaller supply represents 250,000 tonnes in copper. Mr. Okada said the firm tries to increase the profit for electronic materials, metal manufacturing and recycling and environmental services to cover the lower profit from smelting and mining resources in 3 years to March 2010. The firm tries to expand the output of tungsten and cobalt based magnetic target materials for semiconductor while the firm adds a line to make output of rolled copper foil in the year to March 2008.