Banking on increased demand from the government stimulus package, Jiangxi Copper, China's second-largest smelter, predicted that consumption for refined copper products will grow by 2 percent this year.

Wang Chiwei, Jiangxi Copper's executive director, said at an industry conference yesterday that 2008 refined copper output would rise 6.7 percent to 3.68 million tons and copper concentrate production would rise 8.4 percent to 920,000 tons.

Wang said China's copper smelters who use primary material as an input will run at full capacity in 2009.