Kobelco & Materials Copper Tube to Pass Higher Copper Price on Users

Kobelco & Materials Copper Tube announced the firm shifts the building copper tube sales from list price to new price mechanism effective June shipment to reflect change of copper ingot price. The firm keeps the list price system for building hot water supply copper tube but increases the price by 40-50%. The firm passes the surging copper price temporally. The industry players revise the price mechanism under the extremely higher copper price after Sumitomo Light Metal Industries also announced such change on May 19. Kobelco & Materials Copper Tube increased the list price of building piping lining tube twice and increased the building copper tube price since January. The firm tries to improve the profitability under the higher cost for copper ingot and subsidiary materials caused by higher oil price. However, the copper ingot price keeps increasing. The domestic official copper ingot price increased to record 1 million yen per tonne on May 15 after the price increased to 910,000 yen on April 27 from 610,000 yen in early March. The price is still 57% higher than early March though the price decreased to 960,000 yen on May 24. Kobelco & Materials Copper Tube’s list price is based on much lower copper ingot price. The firm decided to change the price system to cover copper price increase when the firm cannot absorb the higher cost price only by own effort. The firm sells 20% of the all copper tune products at list price including water and hot water supply tube.