The copper price on the London Metal Exchange (LME) fell on 22 October to its lowest point in more than five weeks. The three-month contract dropped 1.8 percent to 14,089 dollars per tonne, with an intraday low of 14,031 dollars, the lowest since 15 September. This was reported by the news agency Reuters, in a report published via Kitco News.
Why the copper price fell
According to Reuters, the fall was mainly due to copper returning to LME warehouses. On Wednesday 21 October, 29,050 tonnes were added, mostly in New Orleans. It was the fourth day in a row with inflows. Total LME stocks reached 272,950 tonnes, the highest level since 24 July. About 62 percent of those stocks are in the United States.
Earlier this year, traders moved copper to the American exchange COMEX to get ahead of possible import tariffs. As a result, the COMEX price was above that of the LME. Now COMEX trades below the LME for the short term, and that draws copper back to the LME warehouses, says Alastair Munro of broker Marex in the report.
According to Reuters, a sell-off on the stock markets, due to doubts about the outlook for AI, also weighed on the prices of industrial metals. Aluminium, zinc, nickel and tin also fell that day.
What the copper price does to the price of cables
For anyone who buys cables, the copper price is not distant stock market news. With many cable manufacturers, the price consists of a fixed cable price plus a copper surcharge that moves with the copper price of the day. That surcharge depends on the DEL quotation in euros per 100 kg, which is derived from the LME price and the exchange rate between the euro and the dollar.
A fall of a few percent hardly changes the surcharge on a thin control cable. With heavy power cables, with a lot of copper per metre, every movement does count. Even after the fall, the price stayed above 14,000 dollars per tonne. How exactly the copper surcharge is calculated, with a worked example for three cables, you can read in copper surcharge on cables: how it works.
Three tips for your cable purchasing
- Ask for prices with the surcharge shown separately. Then you see what the cable costs and what the copper of that day costs, and you can compare quotes fairly.
- Allow a margin for projects. If you order a lot of power cable for a project that only starts in a few months, take into account a different surcharge than on the quote.
- Choose the cable you need, not a heavier one. With the Cable finder you find the lightest cable class that suits your travel length and the number of movements in the cable carrier.
Today's surcharge at Wisman
On every series page of our flexible cables you can see the copper weight per variant and the copper surcharge with today's quotation. Choose a variant and the number of metres, and you will see the surcharge per metre and the total. The amounts are an indication: we calculate the final copper surcharge with the quotation of the day of your order confirmation. You will hear stock and price within 1 working day.
