Posted 15 October 2012
After ending 2006 at well over £3000 per ton, copper fell back to around £2600 in mid February 2007. Since March it has steadily climbed to over £4000 – a rise of over 50% in just 8 weeks. It is quite possible that the previous high of £4600+ of last May will be exceeded.
Some of the downturn early in the year was due to reasons ranging from the slowdown in housing developments to the Chinese New Year.
China's consumption in March 2007 has increased by more than 60% to around 310,000 tons compared with March 2006. The LME stock of copper was the lowest since December 2006. All this is likely to push prices even higher in the short term.The rise is partially due to speculators rather than increased demand, although this still has the same impact on pushing prices even higher.
Our advice is, if you can predict your requirements you may be able to agree a fixed price for a bulk quantity and then call it off over a predetermined period. If this is of interest please call us and we can discuss it with you.