The global copper market supply deficit is only getting worse. Electrification, grid upgrades, and power-hungry AI data centers are converging on demand, threatening to stall the largest technological boom of the century.
Prices already show the strain. London copper hit an all-time high near $14,850 a ton in August and now trades around $14,470, up about 15% this year, according to Prinsights Global.
Refined metal “has grown scarce outside the United States” as traders ship physical copper into the U.S. ahead of expected tariffs. That dynamic has drained deliverable inventories elsewhere, including in China.
Forecasters disagree on how big the supply gap will be – yet they agree it’s coming. Morgan Stanley sees the market short about 600,000 tons this year, and J.P. Morgan expects a shortfall of about 330,000 tons. The International Copper Study Group, long cautious, has flipped its surplus forecast to a deficit.
The long-term outlook is worse. BloombergNEF says the world will be short 20 million metric tons of copper by 2050 unless miners invest about $332 billion in new supply. Even if that money is spent, the gap is likely to remain open until at least 2043, because a new mine takes an average of 17 years to develop.
“Electrified transport is the fastest-growing copper application,” BNEF analysts wrote. They described data centers as “a drop in the ocean for copper demand.”
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BHP’s Big Stumble
BHP Group Limited’s (NYSE:BHP) latest quarter showed how easily supply can be knocked off course. Copper output fell 19% to 400.7 thousand tons in the September quarter, missing Visible Alpha’s consensus estimate of 423.6 thousand tons, Reuters reported.
Most of the damage came from Chile. Bad weather and a fatal maintenance accident forced temporary halts at the flagship Escondida mine. In South Australia, an underground conveyor belt failure disrupted the Carrapateena mine for several weeks.
While those were temporary setbacks, Chile’s long-term trend is downward. BNEF expects the country’s output to fall from 5.8 million tons in 2026 to 4.8 million tons by 2050.
Copper now matters more to BHP than ever. This year, it overtook iron ore as the company’s main profit driver. Copper and its byproducts generated $18.19 billion in operating earnings, compared with $14.53 billion from iron ore.
That share leaves the world’s largest miner more exposed to copper prices, just as falling ore grades make existing mines harder and more expensive to run.
Image via Shutterstock
