TOKYO: Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd , Japan’s No.2 copper smelter, plans to boost its copper output in the financial year that started on Friday by 6.1 percent from a year earlier when production was affected due to a maintenance activity.
The company forecast an output of 445,200 tonnes of electrolytic copper in the current financial year, up from an estimated 419,500 tonnes a year earlier, as output at its Toyo Smelter & Refinery in Ehime, western Japan will bounce back from last year when it conducted a 25-day maintenance, it said.
Sumitomo also aims to increase electrolytic nickel output by 2.0 percent in 2016, but it expects a 29 percent fall in ferro-nickel production due to a planned shut down of an electronic arc furnace at its Hyuga Smelting in Miyazaki, southwestern Japan.
In February, the smelter announced it will halt an operation at one of the two local electric arc furnaces to make ferro-nickel to cope with a tighter supply of nickel ore after Indonesia’s export ban in 2014. The Tokyo-based company targets 14,200 tonnes output of ferro-nickel this year, down from an estimated 20,000 tonnes the previous year.
After Indonesia banned unprocessed exports of nickel early 2014, Sumitomo turned to nickel ore from New Caledonia and the Philippines as a replacement. “Nickel ore prices have remained at high level. Taking the cost burden of raw materials and productivity into an account, we have figured it would be wiser to slash output,” the spokesman said.
The company plans to buy 90 percent of nickel ore from New Caledonia and the rest from the Philippines this business year, he added. Ferro-nickel is an alloy made from iron and nickel and is used as a raw material to make stainless steel.
