China 09 Refined Copper Use to Rise 2 pct -Jiangxi

China's refined copper consumption will rise about 2 percent in 2009, Wang Chiwei, executive director at Jiangxi Copper, said in materials provided before a speech to an industry conference in Shanghai on Monday.

Wang said 2008 refined copper output would rise 6.7 percent to 3.68 million tonnes and copper concentrate production would rise 8.4 percent to 920,000 tonnes.

Refined copper output was likely to reach the same level as 2008 or decline in 2009, Wang said.

"China's copper smelters that use primary materials as an input will run at full capacity in 2009, but capacity that uses secondary materials could be limited by short supply of secondary materials," he said.

There was no explanation, but Chinese copper executives sometimes use "primary materials" to refer to concentrate and "secondary materials" to mean scrap.

Wang said China's apparent copper consumption was expected to rise 4 percent to 4.96 million tonnes in 2008. A Reuters calculation showed apparent demand was 4.57 million tonnes in the first 11 months of the year.

Wang's 2009 forecast for refined copper consumption is in line with an estimate by analysts at state-owned research group Antaike.