Besides all the good suggestions so far, have you checked if it _really_ is copper? This may be a far stretch, but after all there are cheap sources that sell cables where the conductors are made of iron or steel, or even aluminium. Especially the aluminium stuff is then coated with a thin copper layer, they call that crap "CCA" for Copper Clad Aluminium.
It wouldn't be the first time that some company sourced stuff from external suppliers and then didn't really get what they expected, while not really checking what they got either.
Greetings,
Chris