Mercuria metals boss says ‘this is the big one’ for copper bulls

Kostas Bintas, the high-profile head of metals at Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., has renewed his bullish prediction for copper prices as he warned that a rush to ship metal to the US risks draining the rest of the world’s inventories.

Traders have been ramping up shipments to the US in recent weeks to once again capitalize on a big premium for metal on New York’s Comex exchange, fueled by ongoing uncertainty about the potential for future tariffs.

The latest trades extend a tumultuous year for copper: US prices soared early in the year after President Donald Trump first threatened tariffs, kicking off a massive flow of metal from the rest of the world. Trump ultimately exempted refined copper from levies, but said he’d revisit the decision in the second half of 2026. Since then, global prices have surged to record levels as a series of mine disruptions tightened supply.

Bintas says copper will soon start ratcheting higher still, as the revival of the lucrative US arbitrage trade fuels shortages elsewhere.

“This is the big one,” he said in an interview at the end of a key industry conference in Shanghai. “If the world keeps going like this we will be left without copper cathodes in the rest of the world.”

Bintas became one of the best known names in the copper market during his years building Trafigura Group’s copper book into the world’s largest. He joined energy trader Mercuria last year, and has led an aggressive expansion into metals markets — Mercuria was one of the biggest players in the arbitrage trade earlier this year, while a huge position that it built in aluminum has rocked the LME aluminum market and forced the exchange to adjust its rules.

He declined to offer a price forecast, but said that global benchmark copper prices on the London Metal Exchange, already trading near all-time highs, could only go higher.

“Just looking at the facts, mathematically… What is going to happen if all of this continues? There’s only one answer: there will be tightness and a higher price,” he said.

US copper imports have slowed since Trump’s July tariff decision, but Mercuria anticipates that they will ramp up in the coming months, with imports in the first quarter of 2026 at a similar pace to the record second quarter of 2025, when they exceeded 500,000 tons.

His bullish call is the latest prediction that a long-anticipated surge in copper prices may finally be about to occur, with executives at rival trading houses IXM and Gunvor Group also warning in recent months that the string of mine disruptions risked creating supply shortfalls.

Bintas made waves with a prediction last March that copper prices could hit $12,000 or $13,000 a ton thanks to the US import draw. In fact, prices tumbled soon afterwards when Trump announced his broad “liberation day” tariffs, but the drop soon reversed as traders raced to ship metal to the US ahead of potential levies on copper.

Now, with producers, manufacturers and traders locking in supply deals for next year, Bintas says there’s growing recognition that ongoing US-bound flows could fuel shortages in China and other markets, even in a weakening demand environment.

“The realization is coming fast,” he said. “Demand is not good, there is a surplus — and the price going higher. There is a special dynamic.”

He acknowledges, however, that his bullish call is driven by US policy. This year’s fireworks in copper offer a stark example of how Trump’s economic agenda is overwhelming traditional forces of supply and demand in metals markets, which have been firmly focused on China’s industrial economy for the past two decades.

Mercuria expects Chinese copper demand to grow by less than 1% next year, but says buyers could soon find themselves in a bidding war as bets on tariffs in the New York market continue to draw metal to the US.

“China is, for now at least, not the marginal buyer,” said Nick Snowdon, Mercuria’s head of metals and mining research. “That role has now shifted to the US.”

The bid from traders has driven up copper premiums for metal that can be delivered against the Comex contract. Some traders have sought to buy Chilean copper for next year at premiums of more than $500 a ton over LME prices, Bloomberg reported earlier. In the past week Chile’s Codelco has shocked Asian customers by offering benchmark premiums of over $300 a ton for supplies to South Korea and China.

“I think the much higher benchmarks started to quantify what is happening,” Bintas said. He said that Chinese buyers had been hesitating to buy at such high prices, but he believed they ultimately would do so. “What perhaps looks like a high number today might be a low number in a few weeks,” he said. “I do think we’re going to see deals getting concluded definitely above the $200 range in Asia.”

The dynamic has created something of a two-speed market, with the LME and Shanghai copper contracts predominantly backed by Russian and Chinese metal that is not deliverable on Comex. Still, Bintas said that Chinese prices on the Shanghai Futures Exchange would eventually have to react to what was happening in the US.

“If we run to $12,000 or $15,000 or whatever it is, the SHFE will take time to catch up. You’re going to see a lot of Chinese copper cathodes coming out. And then when the Chinese will come back from Chinese new year, there will not be enough copper cathodes.”

(By Jack Farchy and Mark Burton)