China's Zhongtiaoshan Nonferrous Metals plans to shut its 50,000 tonnes per year copper smelter on June 10 for maintenance and an upgrade, a company official said on Tuesday.
"It will shut it for two months...We basically have decided to upgrade the smelter during the maintenance," he added.
He said the upgrade would increase capacity by a few thousand tonnes, boosting the company's total smelting capacity to nearly 100,000 tonnes, the seventh largest in China.
State-controlled Zhongtiaoshan also operates a 40,000 tonnes per year smelter, a 25,000 tonnes per year refinery and a mine in China's northern Shanxi province.
The official said the company had started in May building a 50,000 tonnes per year refinery to produce copper cathode and would complete construction within a year.
Construction of the refinery had been delayed from the second half of last year because of weak copper prices, he added.
Zhongtiaoshan would be unable to raise its mining capacity, he said. "Until we find new resources, our mining output will remain the same."
The company would run at full capacity to produce 30,000-40,000 tonnes of copper-in-concentrate from the mine this year, flat from last year, he said.
The official said Zhongtiaoshan wanted to import 40,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate this year as it planned to produce about 75,000 tonnes of copper in blister.
It also planned to produce 25,000 tonnes of refined copper cathode this year, unchanged from last year, he said.
Benchmark three-months copper rose $77 to $2,775 a tonne in London on Monday, underpinned by a weaker dollar.
It was quoted at $2,755/$2,765 by 0818 GMT on Tuesday, against the $1,700 seen in July 2003.
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