Japan Cu Foil Makers to Increase Scrap Procurement in May

Japanese electrolytic copper foil makers are going to increase copper scrap procurement in and after May. Several copper foil makers have asked copper scrap dealers to increase scrap delivery in May and some of them have already agreed. However, copper scrap generation maintains low and the dealers are facing difficulty to secure enough volume of copper scrap.

Several copper scrap dealers said copper foil makers asked them to increase scrap shipment for May-June. Copper foil makers have reduced copper scrap procurement by more than 50% since the beginning of this year. The makers now request to increase the purchasing volume by more than twice compared with January-April. The requested volume is near the peak in 2008, said a large scrap dealer.

Copper foil makers consumes no.1 copper wire scrap or nugget of electric wire scrap. However, generation of electric wire scrap has shrunk due to economy deterioration since autumn 2008. Additionally Japanese copper scrap export has increased bound for China since the beginning of this year. Japanese scrap dealer source said there are little latent inventory of copper scrap in the market.

Scrap dealers are afraid whether they can clear quota delivery volume with few scrap arrivals. Meanwhile, many dealers hope better price terms because Chinese customers had currently offered higher purchasing price than Japanese copper foil makers. It seems to be hard for copper foil makers to procure enough volume of scrap at their preferred price level.