The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission and other 11 departments issued the “Implementation Plan for High-Quality Development of the Copper Industry (2025-2027)”.
Copper is an important basic raw material and a strategic resource related to the national economy and people’s livelihood. In recent years, my country’s copper industry has continued to grow in scale, its industrial structure has continued to optimize, and its equipment technology has continued to improve.
A number of industrial clusters with international competitiveness have been initially formed, which have strongly supported the development of strategic emerging industries such as new energy and new generation information technology. However, at the same time, problems such as insufficient resource guarantee capacity and the need to optimize the industrial structure have become prominent.
The plan proposes that by 2027, the resilience and security level of the copper industry chain supply chain should be significantly improved. The ability to ensure copper raw materials will continue to increase, and the domestic copper mine resources will strive to increase by 5%-10%, and the level of copper recycling will be further improved.
The level of technological innovation will continue to improve, and a number of key processes and high-end new materials for the green and efficient development and utilization of copper resources will be broken through, and the high-end equipment manufacturing capacity will be significantly enhanced. A number of high-quality copper industry enterprises will be cultivated, and the industrial structure will be further optimized.
Looking forward to 2035, the industrial chain will be the world’s leading level, and a high-quality development situation will be fully formed. The ability to ensure copper raw materials will be significantly enhanced, and the technical equipment innovation capability and material application level will be in the first echelon in the world, forming a development pattern with a reasonable industrial structure, high level of technological innovation, good quality and efficiency, and strong global competitiveness.
The Plan proposes 12 key tasks from five aspects, including strengthening the domestic raw material guarantee foundation, promoting structural adjustment, improving industrial innovation capabilities, promoting the green and intelligent development of the industry, and improving the level of open cooperation. It mentions cultivating global leading large-scale copper enterprise groups and improving the concentration of copper mining and smelting.
Focusing on the needs of key areas such as new energy and electronic information, we will focus on cultivating “specialized, specialized and new” and “single champion” enterprises in the copper industry and create a group of high-tech enterprises with international competitiveness.
The plan also proposes to strengthen the in-depth treatment of air pollution in the copper smelting industry, accelerate the conversion of industrial furnaces using high-pollution fuels to electricity, natural gas, etc., build a number of benchmark enterprises that achieve A-level environmental performance, and encourage C-level environmental performance enterprises to strengthen governance and improve performance levels. By the end of 2025, all copper smelting capacity in key areas of air pollution prevention and control will complete A-level environmental performance transformation.
