RE: Saigon Times4 Apr 2022 09:23
Speaking at the CRU 2022 (2022 CRU World Copper Conference) held in Santiago, Chile this past week, Mr. Heimlich said the copper supply gap in the coming decade will be around 6 million tons/year in the context of the copper consumption demand of the electric vehicle industry and the clean energy industry increased sharply.
This means that the world needs to develop 8 copper mine projects of the same size as the world's largest copper mine Escondida in Chile in the next 8 years. Heimlich thinks this is a difficult task because it requires a very large scale of investment and in fact, more than half of the current copper mine projects are developed entirely new.
“In the past, the completion rate of completely new projects was very low,” he said. For example, the part of completely new investment projects in 2012 has so far not been fully developed, so there are doubts about the ability to deal with the shortage of copper supply effectively and in a timely manner. time".
Several large copper mines in the world have been put into operation in the past 3 years. The Cobre Panama open-pit copper mine of First Quantum Minerals (Canada) in Panama has been in commercial production since September 2019. Potential and proven copper reserves in this mine are around 3.1 billion tons. When operating at full capacity, the Cobre Panama mine can produce more than 300,000 tons of copper per year.
Ivanhoe Mines (Canada), also started producing copper concentrates at the Kamoa-Kakula project in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) last May.
British mining group Anglo American mined the first batches of copper ore at the Quellaveco mine located in the Moquegua region of Peru in October 2021. This mine is expected to go into commercial production in mid-2022, capable of providing 120,000-160,000 tons of copper per year. Quellaveco mine's output is expected to reach 300,000 tons/year in the first 10 years if operating at full capacity.
While copper mine projects are in the works, producers are careful to avoid repeating the mistake of oversupplying demand in previous cycles by accelerating plans at a time when development is underway. Copper mines are becoming more complex and expensive.
Copper futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange (Comex) were at a record high of $10,910 per tonne in early March but have declined in recent days due to
due to concerns about China's demand as the country struggles to cope with the worst wave of Covid-19 infections since early 2020.
In the latest report, analysts at the global research division of Bank of America (BofA) also agree with CRU's forecasts. According to the report, rapidly increasing copper production will be a challenge.
“Many of the current projects have been developed over the past three decades, but with relatively limited exploration activity in recent years, supply growth will slow significantly,” they wrote. from 2025”.
New copper supply for the next decade could come from the R
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