(Yicai) June 14 -- The Chinese commodities trader whose USD20 million shipment of copper from Russia has gone missing said it will not significantly impact operations. The company’s stock price still fell for a second straight day.

Wuchan Zhongda Group [SHA: 600704] ended down 2 percent at CNY4.48 (62 US cents) a share in Shanghai today, after declining by 1.5 percent yesterday.

CNY110 million (USD15.2 million) of Wuchan Zhongda’s own money is tied up in the refined copper, equal to about 3 percent of its annual net profit, meaning that the incident will not have a significant impact on operations, the Hangzhou-based firm said in a statement today.

The state-owned company is looking into the matter with its international trading subsidiary Wuchan Zhongda International Group, the firm said, adding that it has a sound internal control system that can effectively manage and control risks related to trade operations.

The 2,000 tons of refined copper that Wuchan Zhongda bought from Russian smelter Regional Metallurgical should have been delivered last month, but it never arrived in port, Bloomberg News reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Wuchan Zhongda is controlled by investors owned by Zhejiang’s provincial government. Last year, the company ranked 138th in the Fortune Global 500 list with revenue of USD85.7 billion.

In the first quarter of this year, the firm’s net profit fell 15 percent to CNY828 million (USD114.1 million) from a year earlier, while revenue rose 4 percent to CNY132.9 billion (USD18.3 billion), according to its most recent trading report.

Russia is one of the world’s major exporters of copper, and China is one of the metal’s largest consumers. Russian exports of copper to China jumped 14 percent to 370,815 tons last year, while those to European Union countries slumped 79 percent, according to media outlet Vedomosti.

Editor: Futura Costaglione