Surging Won-Dollar Exchange Rate Makes Nonferrous Metal Industry Groan under Heaviest-ever Cost Burden

摘要

Local nonferrous metal industry, which has not yet completely gotten out of the burden caused by the large fluctuations of the international market prices for nonferrous metals on the London Metal Exchange, has been faced with another hurdle of surging won-U.S. dollar exchange rate. Most of domestic nonferrous metal products are heavily relying on imports for the supply of raw materials. Korea annually imports about 1.6 million tons of aluminum ingots. Annual imports of copper and copper scrap are about 600,000 tons, a half of the total demand in Korean.