By Jack Farchy
Published: April 7 2011 18:17
Is Chinese copper demand faltering? For the hundreds of miners, smelters, fabricators, bankers and hedge fund managers gathered this week for the industry’s big annual conference in Santiago, that is a market-moving question.
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After an impressive bull run that has taken copper to all-time highs of more than $10,000 a tonne, inventories of the red metal are piling up in Chinese warehouses.
Prices have fallen 5 per cent from their peak in February. The issue is whether the world’s most voracious copper consumer has been using less copper, or whether smelters and manufacturers further down the supply chain have been running down stocks in the hope of lower prices.
The issue is of critical importance to the copper market. China, which eats up 40 per cent of global supplies, is the single most important driver of prices.
Apart from macroeconomic shocks such as a sharp jump in oil prices or a worsening of the eurozone debt crisis, no other question has more impact on the market.
If, as some suspect, the build-up of Chinese copper stocks represents a genuine slowdown of demand for the metal, the market may also be transmitting a broader message about the state of the Chinese economy: that the government’s measures to slow growth are working.
In the Chilean capital, at this week’s Cesco conference, many in the industry were confused about the short-term outlook for copper.
Nobody disagrees there has been a sharp rise in warehouse stocks in and around China. There are no official statistics, but traders estimate inventories of copper in bonded warehouses at ports – where it can be held before import duties are paid – doubled in the last six months to about 700,000 tonnes.
Ordinarily, an increase in inventories is a bearish signal, since it points to a market in which supply is outpacing demand.
But at least part of the rise in warehouse inventories in China reflects a fall in stocks further along the copper supply chain – from smelters, which transform low-grade material into refined copper, to end users of copper in manufactured goods.
As copper prices have rocketed, to touch a record $10,190 a tonne in February, consumers and traders have struggled to finance their working inventory, and have cut back on stocks.
That process has been exacerbated by four interest rate rises in the past five months by the Chinese government, which has made inventory financing even harder.
That leads bulls to argue that China has been playing a game of “chicken” with the market: consumers, who have been rapidly destocking in the hope of a price correction, will soon be forced to resume purchases of copper on the spot market whatever the price, they say.
“Essentially the market is waiting for consumers to come back and bid,” says George Cheveley, natural resources fund manager at Investec Asset Management. “If consumers want some of the stocks, they’re going to have to bid up the price.”
Some already see signs of that happening: there was a small drop in Shanghai inventories in the past week. Marcelo Awad, chief executive of miner Antofagasta, predicts copper prices will average over $8,800 in each of the next three years.
But hedge funds and other investors have already been waiting several months for China’s return. Some are worried that this protracted quiet period is more than just a destocking cycle.
In Santiago, some of the top copper miners are warning of “volatility”– often a euphemism for falling prices – that could last about six months.
Jaroslaw Romanowski, an executive at Polish miner KGHM, says: “I don’t think we have a situation where the pace of industrial production is the same and [the Chinese] only pretend not to need copper. I think there is a real slowdown.
“At some stage these tightening measures will have a real impact on the real economy.”
Mr Romanowski suggests the weakness in China may lead to a market in which supply exceeds demand this year, leading to prices as low as $6,000.
Any correction in prices, though, could be mitigated by the fact that consumers in Europe and the US are also short of copper inventory. “A lot of people are living hand to mouth,” says Raymond Key, head of metals trading at Deutsche Bank. “Down towards $8,500 you are probably going to get quite a lot of buying interest.”
In the long term, the economic cooling process in China may end up being a positive influence on prices. While allowing that Chinese monetary tightening has had an impact on copper demand, John Mackenzie, chief executive of Anglo American’s copper division, argues the rate moves will “lead to a more sustainable path towards the attractive medium- and long-term picture” for copper.
Indeed, the area of most consensus among delegates in Santiago is the bullish long-term outlook for copper, driven by the problems of bringing on substantial new production. And, as if to confirm China’s long-term needs for copper, state-owned metals company Minmetals on Sunday launched a $6.5bn bid for copper miner Equinox.
Nonetheless, without certainty over the actual direction of copper demand in China, few investors are willing to bet right now that the bull run will resume. As Mr Key puts it: “The bottom line is that copper is going into China and not really being used. That’s not bullish.”
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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.
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