A Wide Range of Uses

The copper transformation industry supplies semi-finished products to almost all industrial sectors: even if we don't always realize it, everyday we use products that incorporate semi-finished copper products.

Thanks to copper's excellent physical-chemical properties and the ability of the transformation industry to renew its products to quickly meet the growing demands of the user industries, semi-finished copper and copper alloy products are used as components in a wide variety of finished products.

[Production EU15, IWCC]

Sometimes copper's presence is visible (as for example in roof coverings or decorative objects), other times the copper component is not visible to the end user since it is hidden ("incorporated") in the final product (as for example in the automotive industry or in air conditioning systems).

INDUSTRIES SUPPLIED

KME products are also used in a wide range of industries.
Visit the Industries Supplied section of this site to find out more.

SEMI-FINISHED COPPER PRODUCTS

With regard to production type and considering the amounts, copper wire accounts for almost half the production of semi-finished products.
Generally however, this is where the wire differentiates itself from the rest of the semi-finished industry by the specificity of its manufacturing organization.

[Production EU15, IWCC]

But for other semi-finished products, upstream integration is more or less an exception and the cathodes, with the eventual addition of scrap or work remnants, are generally used for "semi-continuous" casting to obtain large dimension slabs or billets which are then sent for rolling and extruding/drawing.