Interview: China experiences a surge in aluminium power cable capacity building

China is experiencing an investment wave in aluminium power cables with overcapacity looming in the sector, a top executive from Shanghai Shenghua Cable Group told Shanghai Metals Market in an interview this week.

Such investment wave ``should reduce China’s copper consumption in the long run,’’ Hu Wei, Shenghua’s assistant president, said on Wednesday in the company’s industrial park in Shanghai’s Nanhui district.

After having been trialed in China in the past a few years, power cables using all aluminium alloy conductors have gained market recognition and have induced a surge in capacity building around the country, Hu said.

For example, Shanghai-listed Baosheng Science and Technology Innovation Co. is calling for bids to construct a 100,000-tpy aluminum alloy conductor plant in Jiangsu province. For another instance, Anhui province-based Joy Sense Cable Co. is reportedly building China’s largest aluminium alloy power cable production base in Inner Mongolia.

The resistivity of aluminum alloy conductor is lower than that of aluminum conductor, since it is made by adding other elements such as rare earth and steel, Shanghai Shenghua’s Hu said.

``Like many other manufacturing sectors in China, overcapacity in aluminium power cables is beginning to emerge this year,’’ he told SMM in the interview.

Shanghai Electric Wire & Cable Industry Assn. expects Chinese government to issue uniform standards for aluminium alloy power cables by the end of this year.

The country’s power and cable sector consumed 5.1 million tonnes of copper in 2012, accounting for 68% of China’s total copper usage of the year, according to the association’s statistics. Aluminium consumption figures are unavailable.

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