Giant mines currently under construction will churn out an additional one-million tons of copper through 2023, but that won’t be enough to fully close an expected gap between supply and demand in the next few years.
Industry analysts and executives descending on Santiago this week for the Cesco conference, one of the industry’s biggest events, are in bullish spirits: a key indicator of the market for copper ore – known as concentrates – is pointing to the tightest market in more than five years, and banks and brokers such as Morgan Stanley and Macquarie Group rank the metal as one of their top picks.