China is found to be the leading buyer of stolen copper

Mbasa Gqokoma
11 July 2015

The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry has revealed that there has been a decrease in copper theft between April and May.

The Copper Theft Barometer revealed that the level decreased to R12.9 million in May from R13.6 million in April 2015.

The May figure is 2.38% lower than a month ago and 6.1% lower than a year ago.

SACCI Acting CEO Peggy Drodskie said most of the theft that takes place the copper cable are exported and China has actually been one of the key export markets.

“What we have found is, when we always saw that when China was in that growth phase that it was in from time ago, that they were using the copper that was imported for their infrastructure development programs”

Recently there has been research which has been done at the Piking University Graduate School in China, where it indicates that in fact this is not a case at the moment, Drodskie added.