North Copper mentioned in the analyst meeting recently that "50,000 tonnes of high-precision copper plate/strip/foil and 2 million square meters of copper-clad plate (CCL)" project phase II is scheduled to start construction in 2024 and is estimated to finish within two years. While phase I was officially started in March 2021, is expected to complete the whole copper foil production process and the equipment installation of copper strip workshop and casting workshop by the end of this year. At present, the copper foil mill has been put into a trial run with materials.
North Copper has large resource reserves. It is ascertained that Tongkuangyu Mine has 230 million tonnes of copper ore, including 1.39 million tonnes of metal. According to the current production scale, it can serve for more than 30 years, and its resource self-sufficiency rate is higher among similar enterprises. Meanwhile, the natural caving method they use can make the mining cost close to strip mining. So, it has the advantages of large mining capacity, high efficiency, and low cost.
Rolled copper foils have broad market prospects, North Copper pointed out. They are mainly used in flexible circuit boards, new energy batteries, graphene thin film preparation, aerospace and aviation, 5G communication, and other fields. In 2020, 137 million square meters of flexible CCL were produced in China, and about 25,000 tonnes of rolled copper foils were used for circuit boards. The annual sales of mobile phones worldwide were about 1.2 billion, which used rolled copper foils of about 40,000 tonnes for heat dissipation. As for the copper foil consumption of new energy vehicles, a total of 5.78 million passenger new energy vehicles were sold worldwide from January to August 2022, and the annual sales volume is expected to reach 8.7 million, so the annual consumption of copper foil is expected to hit 700,000 tonnes which is based on the consumption of 80kg copper foil per vehicle. With the increasing requirements on the safety of new energy vehicles in the policy, and the development of high-frequency and high-speed communication, the use of rolled copper foil in new energy batteries will be continuously increased.
North Copper believes that the project will bring profits that will be recognized and surprised by the market both from the industrial structure and the new profit growth point, since the produced products copper plate/strip/foil are with good domestic and international market prospects, rapid demand growth and high added value. It should be believed that the project will reach the break-even point after two years of market cultivation and development.
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