Reuters reported that Pan Pacific Copper, Japan's biggest copper smelter has secured a rise in fees to treat and refine copper concentrates from 2 ore suppliers, Escondida and Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc.

The source said that Pan Pacific, part of JX Holdings Inc has agreed with Chile's Escondida partially owned by global miner BHP Billiton on treatment fees of over USD 70 per tonne and refining at over 7 cents a pound for the H1 of 2011.

Copper miners and smelters have radically revamped their treatment and refining contract structures this year amid an increasingly unclear market outlook with some smelters moving towards more frequent contract terms from the usual annual benchmark system.

The executive said that the breakdown of the benchmark system was good to us. Under the previous benchmark system, copper miners forced tough conditions on Japanese and European smelters by striking deals first with Chinese and Indian smelters at a low level.

In 2010, global miners and smelters set the TC and RC at USD 46.5 cent to USD 4.65 cents. This year, Japanese and Chinese smelters agreed different TC and RCs as copper prices hit records.

Pan Pacific said last month that it had signed 2 contract with a South American miner and the TC and RC for this year was USD 80 per tonne and 8 cents per pound up 72% over 2010.

(Sourced from Reuters)