[转帖] [2011.09.24] Copper:Red bull 铜：红牛

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Copper铜

Red bull红牛

The world’s most informative metal
世界上最有料的金属
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Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition



THE locked doors of a public library in West Norwood, a drab part of south London, are an unlikely economic indicator. But a plaintive note explaining the closure—thieves have stripped the roof of its copper cladding, letting in rain on the books below—hints at profound changes to the global economy. And copper is the metal most intimately affected.

西诺伍德是伦敦南部一片无聊的地方，它公共图书馆紧锁的门不太像是一个经济指标。但一张哀伤的便笺不仅解释了其闭馆的原因——小偷们把屋顶外层铜质的包层给剥去了，任由雨滴落在下面的书上——它也暗示着全球经济的深刻变化。而铜，是受到最密切影响的金属。

Police in London note a close correlation between thefts like the one in West Norwood and global commodities markets. Around the world, copper crimes have soared along with its price. Filched cables have reportedly caused train delays and stalled repairs to telecoms networks. Heating boilers, pipes and air-conditioners have been ransacked. Criminals are clearly sensitive to the gyrations of the global economy. Copper is reckoned to go one better: it earned its moniker of “Dr Copper” for its supposed ability as an economic forecaster. The metal’s price movements are widely believed to prefigure shifts in the world economy.

伦敦警察注意到了类似西诺伍德这样的偷盗和全球商品市场的紧密联系。在全球范围内，有关铜的犯罪随着原料价格上涨一路激增。被偷走的电缆，据报道已经导致火车延迟以及电信网络的维修被拖延。加热锅炉、管道和空调都被洗劫。犯罪分子明显对于全球经济的起伏是敏感的。而铜被认为在这方面做的更好：它获得了“铜博士”的绰号，因为它被认为是经济的预报员。这种金属的价格走势被认为预示着世界经济的变化。

The theory looks compelling. Copper’s excellent conduction of electricity and heat means that it is used not only to cable and pipe the globe. An average car contains over 25kg of copper; electronic gadgets, from PCs to mobile phones, use copper for wiring and contacts. Its ubiquity means that rising demand should provide an early indication of an uptick in manufacturing and construction. Copper sagged in the early stages of the credit crisis, for example, and then started to pick up at the end of 2008, some months before the stockmarket began to rebound. Such prescience is now cause for concern. As fears of a double-dip recession mount copper has slumped to a ten-month low.

这个理论看起来令人信服。铜的卓越的导电能力和导热能力意味着它不仅仅被用于制造全球的电缆和管道。一辆汽车平均含25公斤以上的铜；从PC到手机的各种电子产品都使用铜作为连线和触体。它无处不在的特性意味着，铜需求的扩大可以作为制造业和建造业上升行情的早期信号。举例来说，铜价在信贷危机的前期就下降，然后于2008年末期开始上升，而这一现象发生于股市反弹的几个月之前。如此的预言能力是铜现在备受关注的原因。铜价已经跌到十个月新低，双底衰退的恐惧也随之上升。

Copper is less sensitive to the ups and downs of rich-world economies than it was, however. For that, blame China. In 2003, before the full weight of China’s tearaway economy became apparent, copper traded at below $2,000 a tonne. It hit $10,000 a tonne earlier this year, before falling back to $8,400 a tonne now (see chart). Such is the scale of China’s urbanisation and industrialisation, both of which require plentiful supplies of the metal, that it consumes at least 40% (and by some reckonings 50%) of global output of around 16m tonnes in 2010. Global demand for copper is expected to rise by more than 40% to 27m tonnes by 2020.

然而，铜对于发达国家经济的起伏并没有那么敏感。这要归罪于中国。2003年，在中国莽撞的经济之重变得明显之前，铜的交易价格低于2000美元一吨。而今年初铜价曾一度达到10000美元一吨，随后又回落到8400美元一吨（如图）。这就是中国城市化和工业化的规模，此二者皆需要大量铜的供给，由此中国消耗了2010年全球一千六百万吨总产量的40%（一些计算称是50%）。全球铜的需求预计到2020年会上升超过40%，达到两千七百万吨。



Copper is not alone in feeling the effect of China on demand. But the metal is something of a touchstone on the supply side, too. Nearly a decade into China’s rampant commodity-buying spree the bosses of the big mining companies are starting to talk about the growing problems getting all manner of minerals out of the ground. Copper best illustrates the issues they face.

铜并不是唯一受到中国需求影响的金属。它也可以说是供给一方的试金石。在中国狂暴的商品购入盛宴几乎接近十年的时刻，大型采矿公司的老板们开始讨论开采各式矿藏所面对的越来越多的问题。而铜最好的体现了他们所面对的一系列问题。

There are few sizeable new deposits in copper’s heartlands in North and South America and Australia. Annual production at Escondida in Chile, the world’s biggest copper mine, peaked at around 1.5m tonnes in 2007. The only new mine that comes close is Rio Tinto’s Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, which will start commercial production in 2013 and may eventually produce half that amount.

在铜的核心产地，北美、南美和澳洲，已经没有多少大型矿藏了。智力的埃斯康迪达（Escondida）是世界最大的铜矿，其年产量在2007年达到一百五十万吨的峰值。唯一接近其产量的新铜矿是力拓公司（Rio Tinto）的在蒙古的奥尤陶勒盖（Oyu Tolgoi），它将在2013年开始商业运作，产量最终应可以达到前者的一半。

New copper supply is going to be increasingly dependent on smaller mines that are deeper underground and have lower ore grades. As Gayle Berry of Barclays Capital notes, these mines will also mainly be in riskier parts of the world, such as Africa’s copper belt, stretching across Zambia and Congo. The Chinese have a mine in Afghanistan. The lack of vital infrastructure such as roads, railways, power and water, and the ever-lengthening process of getting mining permits, will make the newer mines far more costly.

铜的新供给越来越依靠小规模的矿点，而它们深藏于地下且矿石品级更低。巴克莱银行（Barclays Capital）的盖尔•贝利（Gayle Berry）指出，这些矿点大多位于世界上更加危险的地区，比如非洲的铜带地区（译注），其分布横跨赞比亚和刚果。中国人在阿富汗也有一处铜矿。像道路、铁路、能源和水等一系列重要基础设施的缺乏，以及获取采矿执照的超长过程，都会使得的开采成本较以往高许多。

This bodes ill for future supply. Lead times for new projects, once four to five years, have crept up to between seven and eight years. Wringing extra copper out of existing mines has its difficulties too. Miners dig in the better parts of mines first. As older mines get deeper, ore grades decline and extraction becomes more expensive. The disruption rate (the amount of promised copper that fails to materialise), about 2% five years ago, is now as high as 8%, according to Andrew Keen of HSBC. These difficulties and the buoyant price of iron ore and coal, which can be mined far more easily, have led the world’s biggest diversified miners to favour those commodities when allocating investment.

这预示着未来铜供给的凶多吉少。新项目的交付周期从曾经的四到五年无声无息的变成七到八年。从现在已有的矿藏里“榨”出更多的铜也有它自己的困难。矿工先挖的是矿藏较好的部分。随着老矿越挖越深，矿石品级不断下降，提纯也变得越来越贵。据汇丰银行（HSBC）的Andrew Keen称，破坏率（确定不会转化为铜的矿石量）从五年前的2%变成如今高达8%。上述的困难，加上更易开采的铁矿和煤的价格的上涨，使得世界上最大的多样化采矿集团在分配投资上，更偏向于上述那些商品。

Copper prices are also likely to stay high because of the lack of good substitutes. West Norwood library’s roof repairs are dragging on because of arguments over a suitable replacement for the copper, for instance. Michael Widmer of Bank of America Merrill Lynch reckons that the current price is probably high enough to spur serious efforts to find alternatives. But most of the easy substitution has already been done. The world’s plumbers have switched to plastic piping where they can. Chinese boffins have engineered air-conditioning units with (bulkier) aluminium heat exchangers.

铜价可能维持高位，因为缺乏较好的替代品。例如西诺伍德图书馆屋顶的维修被拖延，也是因为对于合适的铜替代品有争论。美国银行-美林（Bank of America Merrill Lynch ）的Michael Widmer认为现在价格可能已经高道可以激发人们努力认真地去发现替代品的程度了。但是绝大多数的简单替换已经被做过了。世界上的水管工已经在可行的地方都换成使用塑料管道了。中国的科学工作者设计了（更加硕大）的铝制热交换空调设备。

Aluminium can also be used for electric cables but much more has to be used for the same effect. It is no use for increasingly miniature electronic devices. And the connections are nowhere near as good as copper. A drive to wire 2m American homes with aluminium in the 1970s led to several burning down because of sparking from poor connections—building codes now ban aluminium from most domestic wiring. Many utilities are simply not interested in changing their cabling: it would require all their engineers to retrain.

铝也可以用来制作电缆，但是要达到同等效果，用量要多很多。对于越来越小的电子设备它毫无意义。而且，它的连接性也和铜没法比。1970年代的一个计划试图给两百万个美国家庭装铝线，最终导致多处房屋被烧毁，而究其原因，是差劲的连接产生了火花——建筑法规现在已经禁止铝线家用。很多公共事业设备对更换电缆布线直接没兴趣：因为这将要求所有工程师重新接受训练。

In the short term copper prices may drift lower as growth slows in America and Europe. But high prices have encouraged destocking in China and those stocks will eventually need replenishing. Over the long term the fundamentals have most analysts convinced that high prices are here to stay. Dr Copper may no longer be as good at taking the temperature of Western economies. But it speaks volumes about the effect of China on the world.

短期来看，欧美增长减速，铜价可能继续滑落。但是高价也促使了中国的铜库存减少，而这些库存终将被再次补充。长期来看，根据基本面，多数分析师认为高价将持续。铜博士可能不再适合试水西方经济。但是他对中国在世界的影响确是言重九鼎。

译注：
The Copper Belt or Copperbelt (usually spelled as one word) is the copper mining area of Central Africa which runs in Zambia (Copperbelt Province) and Democratic Republic of Congo (Katanga Province). This area gave name to the Copperbelt Province, around the towns of Ndola, Kitwe, Chingola, Luanshya and Mufulira. In some contexts it excludes the Katangan Copperbelt of the Democratic Republic of Congo, around Lubumbashi. —— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperbelt