MANILA, Philippines -- The Philippines' second largest miner, Atlas Consolidated, has shipped its first copper concentrate to China at a whopping $7,600 per ton, or more than double current prices, a company official said on Tuesday.

The first consignment of 5,626 tons of copper concentrate was shipped to Qingdao port in China on Dec. 29 for processing as part of a supply deal with Swiss firm MRI Trading, said Martin Buckingham, Atlas's chief financial officer.

"This is the first of several shipments," Buckingham told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Copper stood at $3,330 per ton on the London Metal Exchange Tuesday, having lost more than half of its value last year due to declining global demand and rising inventories.

Atlas signed a deal last August to supply 60,000 tons of copper concentrate to MRI by June 2009.

The first 30,000 tons of the 28.2-percent grade from Atlas' Toledo mine in central Philippines contain the equivalent of about 8,250 tons of the metal and would be sold at an average of $7,612.50 a ton, the company said.

It did not say if it had hedged the rest of the metal amount to be supplied.

Atlas subsidiary Carmen Copper Corp., which operates the Toledo mine in the province of Cebu south of Manila, expects to ship another 5,600 tons of copper concentrate before the end of January.

Operations at the Toledo mine, estimated to have deposits of 874 million tons of copper ore, with an average grade of 0.41 percent, resumed in July after a 14-year break due to a lack of funding to repair damage caused by typhoons.

Atlas Consolidated Mining and Development Corp. asked shareholders late in October to inject $48 million into the copper mine while it seeks additional debt financing. The figure should cover mine operating costs until February or March, Buckingham said.