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By Amy Lv and Lewis Jackson

BEIJING, Aug 7 (Reuters) - China's copper concentrate imports rose 9% in July as the smelting sector continued to snap up tight concentrate supplies amid a record-breaking production run.

Copper concentrate imports rose 8.9% to 2.56 million tones from 2.35 million in June, data from the General Administration of Customs showed on Thursday.

China's vast and growing copper smelting sector is pulling in more copper concentrate, its main ingredient, to fuel production that is set to hit another record this year. Analysts expect output to grow 7.5% to 12%.

"The growing import volume of copper concentrates reflects the robust demand for copper raw materials among Chinese smelters, especially as some new smelters continue to ramp up," said Zhao Yongcheng, an analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

China also increased unwrought copper imports in July by 3.4% to 480,000 tonnes versus a month earlier, although Zhao said the slowing rate, down from 9% in June, reflected unfavourable prices and limited supply because of the rush to get copper to the United States ahead of import tariffs.

Unwrought copper and copper product imports into China, the world's largest consumer and producer, include anodes, refined metal, alloys and semi-finished copper products.

Imports picked up around mid-July, analysts at broker China Futures said in a note last week, as domestic prices SCFcv1 rose above the international benchmark CMCU3 .

China also exported 542,000 tonnes of unwrought aluminium and aluminium products, including primary, alloy and semi-finished aluminium products, in July, up from June's 489,000 tonnes.

(Reporting by Amy Lv and Lewis Jackson in Beijing; Editing by Kate Mayberry)

((lewis.jackson@thomsonreuters.com; +86 139 1179 6497; Reuters Messaging: Wechat: LewisJackson92))