By Siyi Liu and Colleen Howe
BEIJING (Reuters) -China's unwrought copper imports slid in July from a year earlier, customs data showed on Wednesday, amid subdued demand and high stocks of the metal.
Imports of unwrought copper and products were 438,000 metric tons last month, down 2.9% from 451,159 tons a year earlier, data from the General Administration of Customs showed.
The data includes anode, refined, alloy and semi-finished copper products.
The lower imports come amid stubbornly weak demand in the world's top consumer of the metal used in power and construction sectors.
Amid a protracted property crisis, China's manufacturing activity slipped to a five-month low in July, with retail sales, capital market services and real estate service industries all shrinking.
State-backed research house Antaike expects China's refined copper consumption growth to slow down to about 2.5% this year, from 5.3% in 2023.
Lacklustre demand and strong domestic production resulted in a higher-than-usual rise in inventories this year.
Deliverable copper stocks in the warehouses of Shanghai Futures Exchange have been elevated at around 300,000 tons since April, a four-year high.
For the first seven months of the year, copper imports were up 5.4% at 3.2 million tons, the data showed.
The year-to-date increase was mainly because of more buying earlier this year when participants held an optimistic view on China demand, said He Tianyu, a Shanghai-based copper analyst at commodity research house CRU.
Copper prices have dropped about 20% since an all-time peak hit in late May. The price falls triggered some more buying, with traders seeing more opportunities to import.
Imports are likely to grow as a result of falling prices and demand recovery, He said.
The Yangshan copper premium, a closely watched indicator of China's spot import appetite, dropped into negative territory in May and June but rallied last month and hit a more than four-month high of $48 per ton this week.
Amid global supply shortages of mined copper, imports of copper concentrate were 2.17 million tons for July, their lowest since July last year, but still up 9.6% from a low base of 1.98 million tons imported then, customs data showed.
Copper concentrate imports totalled 16.06 million tons for the first seven months, up 4.5% from a year earlier.