Japan's Pan Pacific plans 3.3% increase in H1 copper output

TOKYO: Japan's Pan Pacific Copper (PPC) plans to produce 303,700 tonnes of refined copper in the first half of the 2021/22 financial year that started this month, up 3.3% from a year earlier, the country's biggest supplier of the metal said on Friday.

PPC is 67.8% owned by JX Nippon Mining & Metals, a unit of Eneos Holdings Inc, and 32.2% by Mitsui Mining and Smelting Co Ltd. PPC outsources smelting and refining operations to their parents' plants.

The increase comes as PPC expects the capacity utilisation rate at JX's Saganoseki Smelter & Refinery in southern Japan to improve this year amid no equipment work which had slowed its operation last year, a company spokesman said.

Following are details of the company's output plan, with comparisons against planned production in the second half and actual production in the first half of the 2020/21 financial year, which ended on March 31.