TOKYO, April 1 (Reuters) - Japan's second-largest copper smelter, Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd, said it planned to produce 420,000 tonnes of refined copper in the 2019/20 financial year that started this month, down 7.7 percent from a year earlier. The decline comes as the company plans a 35-day maintenance at its Toyo Smelter & Refinery in Ehime, western Japan from late-October, a company spokeswoman said. Sumitomo Metal, also Japan's biggest nickel smelter, expects its electrolytic nickel output to rise by 2.3 percent this year to meet rising demand for cathode materials used in rechargeable battery that powers electric vehicles. Sumitomo Metal supplies the nickel-cobalt-aluminium (NCA) cathode materials used in Panasonic Corp's lithium-ion battery that powers Tesla Inc's Model 3 and Model X. The Japanese smelter also plans to raise ferro-nickel production by 8.5 percent. Ferro-nickel is an alloy made from iron and nickel and is used as a raw material to make stainless steel. Here are details of the company's output plan, compared with planned production in the 2018/19 year which includes the actual output in the first half and the estimate for the second half. (copper, nickel, zinc in tonnes; gold and silver in kilograms): H1 FY2019/20 H2 FY2019/20 Electrolytic copper 210,000(230,640) 210,000(224,300) Electrolytic nickel 31,300(28,200) 31,300(33,000) Ferronickel 6,700(6,156) 6,600(6,100) Gold 8,100(10,808) 8,100(9,800) Silver 108,600(118,500) 108,600(107,900) (Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Uttaresh.V)
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