China's large copper smelters and global miner BHP Billiton have settled 2012 term copper concentrate treatment and refining charges at USD 60 a tonne and 6 US cents a pound.

Smelter sources said that this is 5.5% lower than the USD 63.5 a tonne and 6.35 US cents a pound Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold agreed for clean, standard copper concentrate for delivery in 2012 with major Chinese smelter Jiangxi Copper and Japanese smelter Pan Pacific Copper.

The Freeport fees are a 12.4% increase from 2011 charges while the BHP TC/RCs are about a quarter lower than last year.

TC/RCs are paid by miners to smelters for converting concentrate into refined metal.

A trading source at a large smelter said that "India signed USD 60 and 6 cents with BHP first and that made our talks more difficult.” He said Chinese smelters and BHP had finalized the talks late last week.

In 2011, Chinese smelters and BHP failed to set yearly TC/RCs for term concentrate deliveries and set TC/RCs in half year charges for the first time, agreeing to charges set at USD 72 and 7.2 cents for the first half of the year and USD 90 and 9 cents for the second half.

(Sourced from Thomson Reuters)