Smart transformation powers growth of China's major copper smelter

Finished copper plates are automatically loaded onto a truck at a smart electrolysis workshop of Guixi Smelter in Yingtan City, east China's Jiangxi Province, on Jan. 21, 2026.

Guixi Smelter is affiliated with Jiangxi Copper Co., Ltd. (Jiangxi Copper), the largest copper producer in China. Guixi alone accounts for about 10 percent of the country's electrolytic copper output.

Thanks to more than four decades of development, Guixi now boasts an annual copper production capacity of more than one million tonnes. Driven by an ongoing transformation towards smart operation, 12 labor-intensive steps in the smelting process have been fully automated at the smelter.

Copper finds increasingly wide applications in both daily life and industrial production, especially in new energy vehicles and AI chip manufacturing.

Yingtan, where Guixi Smelter is located, does not have a single copper mine, but it managed to grow into a leading city for cooper smelting and processing, which annually contributes an output value exceeding 500 billion yuan (about 72.49 billion U.S. dollars). (Xinhua/Wan Xiang)