The government is taking measures to respond to global supply chain risks, including expanding the stockpile of non-ferrous metals.
On the 21st, the Public Procurement Service (PPS) announced that it held a Stockpile Advisory Committee meeting at the Seoul Regional Procurement Service and finalized the '2025 Stockpile Business Plan.'
The stockpile business plan includes strengthening the government's stockpiling functions through expanding the scale of public stockpiles, stockpiling economic security items, transferring rare metals, and establishing a mid- to long-term roadmap for stockpile bases.
Accordingly, the PPS plans to gradually increase the stockpile scale of six types of non-ferrous metals?aluminum, nickel, copper, zinc, tin, and lead?from 53 days last year to 55 days this year, and 60 days next year. Among these, the PPS emphasized that it will focus on increasing the stockpile of aluminum, which is entirely dependent on imports, and copper, whose demand is expected to rise in the future.
The stockpile inventory of economic security items such as urea will be maintained at the current level, but raw materials for compound fertilizers will be newly included as stockpile items in the first half of this year. With the inclusion of compound fertilizer raw materials, the number of economic security stockpile items will increase from four last year to five this year.
In addition to compound fertilizer raw materials, the PPS plans to continuously identify economic security items that require public stockpiling to enable proactive responses to global supply chain crises.
In line with the expansion of stockpile scale, rare metals currently being stockpiled will be transferred to the Korea Mine Rehabilitation and Mineral Resources Corporation by 2028, and a mid- to long-term plan will be prepared and implemented for restructuring small stockpile bases and establishing regional stockpile bases. This means placing greater emphasis on efficient space utilization as stockpile volumes increase.
To increase the possibility of securing supplies in the event of a global supply chain crisis, the PPS will expand the introduction of 'annual supply contracts' across all non-ferrous metals and strengthen incentives for other stockpile operators of economic security items to enhance the stability and scalability of the projects.
Other stockpiling refers to a stockpiling method where the PPS stores stockpiled materials purchased by the PPS under the condition that demand companies use a certain percentage and then replenish them.
Im Gi-geun, Administrator of the PPS, said, "This year, tensions between the U.S. and China over tariff issues are higher than ever, making it important to prepare for global supply chain risks. The PPS will strengthen the public stockpiling function for essential industrial raw materials to secure time to respond to supply chain crises and will make every effort to support stable operations of companies during normal times."
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
