Copper: Humanity’s first and most important future metal
Millions of feet of copper wiring will be required for strengthening the world’s power grids, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes more are needed to build wind and solar farms.
Chile’s Codelco, the world’s biggest copper miner, is offering to sell copper at a premium of $234 a metric ton to European customers next year – matching this year’s record – a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The premiums set by Codelco for physical delivery of copper are paid on top of the London Metal Exchange (LME) contract and are sometimes used as a benchmark for global contracts for the metal used in the power and construction industries.
State-owned Codelco declined to comment.
The premium hit a record level this year as European consumers shunning Russian copper after Moscow invaded Ukraine last year were looking for alternative sources of supply. Another factor was high energy and transport costs.
Both transport and logistics costs have since dropped.
Russia was previously a major supplier of copper to the European Union (EU). The EU imported more than 801,000 tons of copper in 2021, of which nearly 292,000 tons came from Russia according to data from Trade Data Monitor (TDM).
Elsewhere, Europe’s biggest copper smelter Aurubis NAFG.DE will charge a premium of $228 a metric ton over the LME price for copper it sells to its European customers in 2024, unchanged from 2023.
Austria’s Montanwerke Brixlegg is offering its low-carbon copper next year to customers at a premium of 286 euros a ton over the (LME) price starting next year, a small reduction from this year.
(By Pratima Desai; Editing by Susan Fenton, Veronica Brown and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
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