Analyze Decrease of Copper Mine Production

Due to the decrease of copper mine production, China's copper concentrate production decrease phenomenon has been attracting extensive attention. According to the data of State Statistics Bureau, it shows that China copper concentrate production was 970 thousand tons from January to July, which declined 5%.

As copper prices crashed, the proportion for the decrease of domestic copper mine production increases, but they are mainly private medium and small mines, it is reported that 35% of the domestic copper enterprises are private, however, there is no obvious decrease production for 65% of the state-owned mining enterprises temporarily.
It is believed that the following four reasons lead to the decrease of copper mine production :
Copper prices: the global economy recession, China's economic growth is slowing, the copper market demand is weakened, so copper has a steep fall in price.
Environmental policy: as the domestic environmental protection policy becomes more and more strict in recent years, more and more small and medium-sized mining enterprises are affected by this policy, so the production decreases.
Mining exploring difficulty: as the mining exploring difficulty of domestic copper increases, the mining grade decreases and the enterprise cost rises.
Capital: tight bank lending for mining enterprises and the available funds are not ideal, which bring great fund pressure to enterprises.
It is understood that although the domestic mine production decrease phenomenon is relatively serious, refinery plant has steady procurement demand of copper mine, so the market keeps in balance.
It is expected that the production of China domestic copper concentrate is about 1.6 million tons, however ,the production was 1.74 million tons in 2014.