Japanese Cathode Copper Import and Export Decrease in January

Japanese nonferrous metals import volume represented year-to-year plus for more than half items of the trade statistics by Ministry of Finance in January. The import of primary aluminium ingot hit the highest volume since February 2009 at 155,290 tonnes in January, though it was 9% lower than a year earlier. The import of aluminium alloy ingot increased by 17% to 73,439 tonnes in January from a year earlier, which represented the first year-to-year plus since September 2008.The cathode copper import decreased by 26% to 2,797 tonnes and anode copper import halved in January from a year earlier. On the other hand, the copper scrap import increased by 27% to 5,591 tonnes when scrap generation kept low in Japan.As to the export, the cathode copper decreased by 20.7% to 45,597 tonnes in January from a year earlier. The export for China dropped by 47.1% to 25,290 tonnes. On the contrary, the copper scrap export increased by 67.1% to 30,459 tonnes, of which the export for China jumped by 67.7% to 27,737 tonnes when Chinese importers seemed to purchase Japanese copper scrap aggressively with an expectation of the price up.The aluminium scrap export increased by 52.7% to 8,815 tonnes. The export increased by 49.6% to 6,149 tonnes for China and expanded by 3.4 times to 1,317 tonnes for South Korea. The secondary aluminium alloy demand is strong in these countries and material imports are increasing.