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As the third most-consumed metal behind iron ore and aluminum, copper is all around us. Found naturally in the Earth’s crust, copper was the first metal used by humans, dating back to the 8th century BC.
Malachite was one of the first ores used to produce copper metal. Often found with azurite, malachite is a mixture of copper, iron and oxygen. It has a deep green color that does not fade over time or when exposed to light. This made malachite a popular pigment for painting. Ancient Egyptians used it for tomb paintings. European painters, especially in the 15th and 16th centuries, loved the palette of greens it gave.
Automobiles have used copper and brass radiators and oil coolers since the 1970s. More recent applications include on-board navigation, anti-lock braking systems, heated seats, defrosting wires embedded in windows, hydraulic lines, and wiring for window and mirror controls. The shift toward underground wiring, which requires twice as much metal as overhead lines, is intensifying the demand for copper.
To electrify the global vehicle fleet requires bringing into production 55% more new mines. Between 35 and 195 large new copper mines would have to be built by 2050, at a rate of up to six mines per year. In heavily regulated environments like the United States and Canada, it can take up to 20 years to build The baseline scenario supposes a more realistic, but still challenging 35 new copper mines, or one per year from 2018.
Going deeper underground would grow the resource to 89Bt, and 241BT may be recoverable from the sea floor. , prices are being buoyed by the need for more data centers to support the development of artificial intelligence, all of which will require copper., where the war with Russia is consuming tonnes of bullet cartridge casings made of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc.
Effectively, lower grades mean millions of tonnes more rock needs to be moved and processed to get the same amount of copper. E&MJ Engineering stated in its outlook for copper production to 2050, “The trend toward declining orebody grades and continued development of the pursuit of existing operations to exploit lower grade deposits is likely to continue, in the absence of high-grade project discovery.
According to Sprott, capital for the exploration and development of copper mines peaked at $26.13 billion in 2013. Since then, it has almost halved and remains low, with only $14.42 billion spent in 2022.that between 2009 and 2016, copper supply grew at a CAGR of 3.5-4%. Since 2016, when copper priced bottomed at around $2-2.20/lb, the CAGR is around 1%.
There are also concerns about Zambia, Africa’s second largest copper producer, where drought conditions have lowered dam levels, creating a power crisis that threatens the country’s planned copper expansion. in production at the world’s newest major copper mine, Kamoa-Kakula in the DRC.
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