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Glencore Cuts Tie With China Trader in Copper Scandal – FT

About 200,000 tonnes of copper believed held at storage sites in Qinhuangdao port for Glencore and over a dozen Chinese companies is reportedly missing, the report says


The logo of commodities trader Glencore is seen at the group's head office in Baar, Switzerland, on September 30, 2015. File photo: Arnd Wiegmann, Reuters.

 

Switzerland-based Glencore and other major traders have stopped supplying Chinese metals merchant Huludao Ruisheng over a brewing scandal about missing copper inventories in the port of Qinhuangdao, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

Glencore and Geneva-based commodity trader IXM SA have stopped supplying the Hebei-based metals group, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

At the centre of the scandal is a storage site in Qinhuangdao that is holding only one-third of the 300,000 tonnes of copper concentrate that more than a dozen Chinese companies were financing, according to an earlier report.

The 13 Chinese trading companies – 12 of which are state-owned – are facing potential losses of as much as 3.3 billion yuan ($490 million) from the missing concentrate and have sent a team to Qinhuangdao to investigate and determine appropriate legal action, the FT report said.

Glencore, IXM and Huludao did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Glencore transferred some of its existing metal stocks from Qinhuangdao to alternatives such as Qingdao in an effort to avoid similar problems, the newspaper said citing a trader.

 

  • Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard

 

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Glencore reinstates dividend amid post-pandemic optimism

 

 

 

Jim Pollard

Jim Pollard is an Australian journalist based in Thailand since 1999. He worked for News Ltd papers in Sydney, Perth, London and Melbourne before travelling through SE Asia in the late 90s. He was a senior editor at The Nation for 17+ years.