“At this discounted price level, some copper scrap suppliers could suffer losses. The price of scrap cannot even cover the processing costs so suppliers have become reluctant to sell,” a source with a major copper refinery in China said.
High-purity copper scrap, used as a raw material by fabricators and refineries, is sold at a discount to the copper metal price. When the copper price declines, the discount typically narrows, resulting in a smaller gap between the copper price and the outright price of...