Pan Pacific Copper restarts Japanese refinery

摘要

Japan’s largest copper producer, Pan Pacific nCopper, has restarted the Hitachi refinery in nIgaraki prefecture Tuesday after a five-week stop-npage, a company spokesman said. The refinery nwas shut due to damage to the facility after a nmassive earthquake hit northeast Japan March n11. The Hitachi plant resumed refining copper nanode early Tuesday, and the first copper cath-node shipment is expected in the first week of nMay, the spokesman said. The refinery’s output nwill be raised by 10% in the next five months nfrom its initial production plan, by increasing the nelectric intensity at the plant during the night. nFollowing the output hike, the refinery will pro-nduce 59,000 mt of cathode over April-September, ninstead of 53,430 mt announced earlier while nPPC’s April-September copper output will nincrease to 263,064 mt, from 257,494 mt. “We nwill respond to tight copper supply conditions in nthe country, by hiking output by around 10%,” the nPPC said. The shutdown of Mitsubishi Materials’ 260,000 mt/year Onahama smelter in nFukushima prefecture since the March 11 nquake, has further tightened copper supply. nThe Hitachi refinery uses the copper anode nfeedstock produced by PPC’s Saganoseki nsmelter in west Japan. The smelter has nbeen shut since the week of March 21 non an annual turnaround. The Saganoseki nsmelter is expected to come on-stream late nthis week, the spokesman said.