China plans to expand output of secondary nonferrous metals by 60 percent from 2010 to 1.2 million tonnes by 2015 by tapping into scrap, a senior official at the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association Recycling Metal Branch said on Tuesday.
China plans six to eight new scrap copper plants each with an annual capacity of 200,000 tonnes, eight to 10 scrap aluminum plants with 200,000 tonnes of capacity and 10 lead recycling projects with 50,000 tonnes of capacity, said Hongchang Ma, deputy secretary general of the association.
There are also plans for five scrap processing plants in the next five years with dismantling capacity of 1 million tonnes, and five recycle markets with trading volume of 600,000 tonnes per year, Ma said.
China’s scrap metals recycling industry however is marred by inefficiency and environmental issues, though Ma said over the next few years China aims for consolidation and improving technology through research and development.
China, the world’s top consumer of copper, imported 1.4 million tonnes of scrap copper in the first four months of the year, up 2 percent from a year earlier, the official customs data showed.
China produced 2.4 million tonnes of secondary copper, 3.8 million tonnes of secondary aluminum and 1.3 million tonnes of secondary lead in 2010, Ma said.
The total output of secondary nonferrous metals in 2010, at 7.5 million tonnes, accounted for a quarter of the country’s total metals output.
