Aurubis, Europe's largest copper producer, sees the domestic copper cathode market balanced, while the company's multi-metal strategy will see it better adjust to the region's changing trade landscape, chairman of the executive board Roland Harings told Fastmarkets in an interview during LME Week.
The German-based producer has had a tempestuous year of change, with a leadership restructuring in June ushering in Harings. The producer's Future Complex Metallurgy (FCM) project, which was planned to reduce capacity bottlenecks at its Hamburg plant, was also scrapped.Yet in a market currently characterized by poor demand and fragile premiums, Harings maintained broad stability across the European copper market, with further opportunities for new investment both upstream and downstream still emerging. "Things in Europe are balanced," Harings told Fastmarkets. "Looking at previous years' analysis, I think we have this very common pattern, ahead of the new year there always appears to be a deficit, albeit very small. But compared with the size of the market, around 100,000-200,000 tonnes is really a rounding error." While acknowledging a slight downturn in demand compared with 2018, Harings said that Aurubis had no problem purchasing material, be it copper concentrates or scrap, against...