Foreign media news on July 4: Sources said on Tuesday that Chilean miner Antofagasta (Antofagasta) and Chinese smelters have reached an agreement to trade at 88 US dollars per ton and 8.8 cents per ton in 2024. The treatment/refining charge (TC/RC) for supplying copper concentrate to China is the same as the 2023 treatment charge finalized at the end of last year, but higher than the one finalized in the middle of last year. At the end of 2022, Antofagasta and Chinese smelters agreed to set a treatment fee of US$88/ton for half of the copper concentrate supplied in 2023. The 2023 (January-December) copper concentrate treatment fee, which was previously finalized in mid-2022, was $76/ton.
Analysts at the consulting firm CRU Group said that the figure of US$88 indicates that the supply of copper concentrate is sufficient for some time to come, although it is slightly lower than most smelters' expectations of more than US$90, and the current processing fee for spot copper concentrate has risen to 90 USD/ton. China's copper concentrate spot treatment fee hit $90.5 a tonne on Monday, the highest level since January 2019, pointing to an improvement in China's copper concentrate supply.
Analysts expect the global copper concentrate market to experience a surplus this year and 2024, turning into a deficit from 2025 onwards. The supply in 2023-2024 is adequate, but the copper concentrate market is likely to turn tight in the second half of 2024 as new smelters and expansion projects come online, CRU analysts said. CRU expects that China will add more than 1 million tons of smelting capacity in 2024. Antofagasta also agreed to supply copper concentrate to Japanese and South Korean smelters at a processing fee of $88 per tonne between July 2023 and June 2024, the sources said.
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