China's Yunnan Copper shuts smelter until Jan 8

Yunnan Copper Co Ltd 000878.SZ, China's third-largest copper producer, has shut a 200,000 tonnes per year (tpy) smelting facility after water leaked from a heating system on Dec. 24, the company said on Tuesday.

The incident forced the firm to bring forward a maintenance programme to between Dec. 25 and Jan. 8, from the planned starting time on Jan. 5, it said in a statement posted on the firm's website. (www.yunnan-copper.com)

"The refinning production did not stop and is using stocks to produce," a Yunnan Copper source told Reuters.

He added the facility which was shut took up about half of the firm's copper smelting capacity in Yunnan province.

Yunnan Copper is expanding its annual refining capacity to more than 600,000 tonnes by March 8 next year, another statement posted on the company's website said. Currently, it has about 500,000 tonnes.

The company said it had proposed to sell 2,000 tonnes of refined copper to Yunnan province for its planned base metal reserves, just 0.6 percent of Yunnan Copper's production in 2008.

The plan, announced in early December, calls for the building of a reserve of 1 million tonnes of base metals, including 150,000 tonnes of copper, to take advantage of the lowest prices in years and to bolster weak demand. [ID:nHKG177952] [ID:nPEK2687]

Yunnan Copper produced 423,500 tonnes of refined copper in 2007, the firm's annual report said.

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