SINGAPORE, July 24 (Reuters) – London copper prices bounced back on Tuesday, buoyed by concerns over possible disruptions to supply from the world’s biggest copper mine.
Negotiations between workers and management at Chile’s Escondida mine are deadlocked without signs of progress towards an agreement a little more than a week before the current labour contract expires.
“Unions at the Escondida copper mine said that negotiations with management had broken down and that an agreement did not look likely before next week’s deadline,” ANZ said in a note.
“This could see the mine suffer another strike-related disruption.”
The rise in copper prices was limited by slowing growth in top consumer China.
China will adopt a more vigorous fiscal policy to help tackle external uncertainties without resorting to strong policy stimulus.
Slowing economic growth has sparked a heated debate among government researchers on whether fiscal policy should play a bigger role in softening the impact of a trade war with the United States.
COPPER: Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange had risen 0.6 percent to $6,167 a tonne by 0328 GMT, with the most-traded copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange adding 1 percent to 49,350 yuan ($7,247.12) a tonne.
SCRAP: China’s June scrap copper imports dropped by 39.8 percent year-on-year to 200,000 tonnes, Chinese customs data showed.
ALUMINIUM: LME aluminium fell around 0.4 percent to $2,061 a tonne, while prices in Shanghai gained 0.7 percent to 14,280 yuan a tonne.
POSITIONS: LME aluminium rose 2 percent on Monday as investors bought back bearish positions after a U.S. official raised the prospect of lifting sanctions on Russia’s Rusal .
RUSAL: Cancelling sanctions on Rusal, the world’s biggest aluminium producer outside of China, would ease fears of a supply shortage. However, some investors who had placed short positions in expectation of sanctions being lifted were now liquidating them, said Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke.
