Demand expected to grow

摘要

While China is expected to increase its copper smelting capacity over the next four years, it is also anticipated the country will need to import 1.8 million tonnes of the base metal annually by 2010. This compares to the 760,000t of copper concentrate it imported last year. These were some of the numbers presented to conference delegates by Kazua Kitazawa, managing director of Nippon Mining Research and Technology Company Ltd, who looked at the copper situation in the larger Asian region. During 2004, Kitazawa explained, the area imported a total (raw and refined) of 4 Mt of copper.