Furukawa Circuit Foil to Seek Additional Hike for Electrolytic Copper Foil

Tochigi based Furukawa Circuit Foil keeps trying to increase the selling price of electrolytic copper foil to expand the profitability though the firm had tried only to pass the higher copper cost price on the users. Japanese electrolytic copper foil makers sell the product at US$ 11.5-13 per kilogram for commodity grade product with 35 micrometers thick in Asian market. The firm said the commodity grade price now meets the copper ingot price after the firm increased the price for shipment in June and July to cover extra higher international copper price.

The firm realized the price hike target generally after the firm announced US$ 2 per kg of hike for commodity grade products for July shipment. However, the firm said the selling price can earn only marginal profit.

Commodity grade foil price is around 80% higher than the peak in 2000 under information bubble. However, with the higher raw materials cost, the profit margin decreased from 2000. Copper ingot price increased to more than 4 times at US$ 7.5-8 per kg at settlement of London Metal Exchange compared with US$ 1.8-1.9 in 2000.

The supply of electrolytic copper foil keeps tight both for commodity grade and high performance products since summer of 2005. The commodity grade products represent more than 50% of Furukawa Circuit Foil’s copper foil sales volume in area. The firm tries to keep increasing the selling price to expand the margin under the full capacity operations when the cost keeps increasing for subsidiary materials and freight along with copper ingot.