China's copper concentrate and ore imports in May fell to their lowest in 18 months as mining outages crimped supplies to the world's top metals consumer and producer, but unwrought metal arrivals jumped from a month earlier, data showed on Thursday.
Imports of copper concentrate and ore, raw materials used to make metal, totalled 1.15 million tonnes, their lowest since October 2015, the General Administration of Customs showed.
That was down 20 percent from a year earlier and 15.4 percent lower than April, the data showed.
Arrivals of anode, refined, alloy and semi-finished copper products came in at 390,000 tonnes in May, up 30 percent from a month earlier but down 9 percent from a year ago.
