![]() However, last year's trade figures highlight a significant kink in the flow of Russian copper to China. It's worth noting that January's exports were a whopping 117,000 tonnes, compared with 35,500 tonnes in January 2021, which attests to the bulge effect in outbound flows around the tax hit.Įxports averaged around 700,000 tonnes in the 2018-2020 period, supplemented by 150,000 tonnes of copper wire, which is a better historical yardstick than last year's low-ball count. That reflected significantly lower output at Norilsk Nickel due to mine flooding and trade disruption resulting from a temporary 15% export tax between August and December. The country's exports of unwrought refined copper totalled 463,000 tonnes in 2021, the lowest annual outflow since 2014, according to the International Trade Commission (ITC). Russian copper export flows are more nuanced than they appear at first sight and last year's figures are a poor starting point for analysis. ("Copper Convergence Rally Begins", March 3, 2022) Goldman Sachs argues that copper is "mispricing Russian supply risk", the super-cycle bull keeping its elevated target of $12,000 per tonne over a 12-month time-frame. Maybe it's just as well, since not everyone is so sanguine about the consequences of what the Russian government terms its "special operation" in Ukraine. However, the LME executive has made it clear that it's not in the business of pre-empting governments on imposing sanctions and has no plans to ban unilaterally any Russian metal. It's probably one reason why the LME's Copper Committee, representing a broad spectrum of consumers, producers and merchants, felt able to vote for a ban on new deliveries of Russian copper to the exchange. The assumption is that the rest of the world can live without Russian copper and that China will simply soak up what is displaced from Western markets. Moreover, much of what is exported ends up in China, which absorbs around 400,000 tonnes per year of Russian copper. ![]() It is also a big exporter of both unwrought metal and copper wire but doesn't have the same commanding position in Western supply chains as, say, in palladium, where Norilsk Nickel alone accounts for 45% of global production. ![]() Russia is a big copper producer with refined production of around one million tonnes per year, representing about 4% of global production. Russian copper exports by destination 2020
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