A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE OF THE COPPER SMELTING BUSINESS -With a special Reference to China-

摘要

In the day-to-day life of today the copper business is influenced directly by the ever-increasing general concern about the environment. In addition to that the inherent shortcomings of the copper smelting business have since many years been the falling real price level of the metal and the relatively high initial capital investments required for the production units. The producers employing Outokumpu Flash Smelting Technology are, however, fortunate in that these shortcomings have been compensated for by high productivity, low specific operating costs, low metal inventory and unbeatable technological superiority of the flash technology. Thus today nearly 50% of the world primary copper is produced by utilizing Outokumpu Flash Smelting. This figure is expected to grow further in the future. In the '90s new technologies based on Outokumpu Flash Smelting Concept have been taken into operation, thus eliminating the batch type, non-continuous Peirce-Smith converting process step. New innovative solutions have been used in the latest copper projects, i.e. Flash Converting in Kennecott Utah Copper and the most recent example of Direct-to-blister Flash Smelting, the startup at the Olympic Dam smelter in Australia. These new technologies enable the utilization of the Production Network option. This new approach to metal production will have its break-through and will be widely practiced earlier than the management of the copper production may be considering today. Low treatment charges and copper prices are leading to a totally new structure in ownership and partnership between companies. Potential savings in operation costs will contribute to the decision making for this kind of structural arrangements. A new trend will be starting from expansion of Flash Smelters to Production Networks. The present situation prevailing in China Outokumpu sees as an ideal opportunity to adopt the Production Network and Megaton Smelter concepts presented in this paper to incorporate and cover the complete productions of atleast the Tongling and Jianxi Corporations.