Reuters quoted a director at powerful industry body of China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association as saying that China's locally produced copper scrap is expected to peak as early as 2014.

Mr Lu Jian director of the information department of the association's recycling branch said that "Another 5 to 6 years, the collection of copper scrap domestically would enter into the peak period."

Mr Lu said that China's copper scrap production for this year would fall from last year's 600,000-700,000 tonnes, following the local collection of copper scrap basically stopped in the Q1.

He added that imports had also fallen mainly due to reduced overseas supply and tighter customs checks on scrap imports since May increasing the cost of imports.

China produces a third of its copper scrap, heavily relying on imports, which fell 33% on the year to near 3 million tonnes in the first 9 months of 2009. Scrap is used both by smelters as feed for the production of refined copper in China and by fabricators as feed for the production of semi finished copper products.

A shortage of scrap boosted imports of refined copper to record highs in the first half by China, the driver for the over 100% price rise on the London Metal Exchange MCU3 in 2009.

Mr Lu said that a quarter of China's semi finished copper products is made from copper scrap and a third of the country's refined copper production is made from scrap. He said that China produced 1.2 million tonnes of recycled copper in the first 9 months of the year of which only a third came from locally collected scrap. That recycled copper output reflects a near 16% fall in monthly production on average this year. The output was 1.9 million tonnes in 2008.