Reuters | March 28, 2025 |
Codelco head offices in Santiago. (Image by Rodrigo Fernández | Wikimedia Commons.)
Chile’s Codelco, the world’s largest copper producer, has been redirecting some of its spot sales to the United States, CEO Ruben Alvarado said on Friday.
US President Donald Trump in February ordered a probe into potential new tariffs on copper imports in an effort to rebuild US production, a move that appeared to prompt a rush for copper.
Alvarado also said he did not see any reason for copper to be subject to a sanction or tariffs, and anticipated strong long-term fundamentals for copper demand beyond short-term swings.
“We are committing to the needs of our clients in the United States, we are redirecting part of our spot sales,” Alvarado said in a press conference to discuss Codelco’s 2024 results.
Codelco reported a swing into the black for its 2024 earnings, posting a pre-tax profit of $790 million compared to a loss of $757 million the previous year.
The state-owned miner said output totaled 1.328 million metric tons, a touch above the 1.325 million tons it reported for 2023 and within its target range.
Codelco said it began in August to post higher production figures than in the year before.
“In 2024 we succeeded in leaving the production valley,” it said in a presentation, adding it had lowered costs and resolved some long-standing issues at some of its key complexes.
The company also said production is expected to start at the Andesita and Andes Norte divisions this year.
Codelco said it expects 2025 output to reach between 1.37 million and 1.4 million tons.
The copper miner reiterated its expectation of beginning a joint venture with lithium producer SQM this year, and said it would choose a partner for the Maricunga lithium project in the second quarter.
(By Fabian Cambero, Daina Beth Solomon and Sarah Morland; Editing by Kylie Madry, Deepa Babington and Alistair Bell)
Column: Can Trump’s critical minerals drive pass the copper test?
Reuters | March 27, 2025 |
Image courtesy of The White House.
US President Donald Trump’s executive order on boosting domestic minerals production is intended to blast a path through the thicket of mine permitting in the United States.
It takes an average of nearly 29 years for a new mine to go from discovery to production in the United States, the second-longest lead time in the world after Zambia, according to S&P Global.
Permitting on Federal Land in particular is a big problem and one that the US government is uniquely qualified to solve.
The Joe Biden administration struggled to reconcile its ambition to produce more “green” metals for the energy transition with its environmental and social credentials.
Trump has no such qualms.
The Secretary of the Interior is instructed to “prioritize mineral production activities over other types of activities on Federal lands”.
But there is a danger that the political pendulum will swing too far the other way. There is also the problem that new mines still take many years to build and the US lacks the processing capacity to convert raw materials to metal.
Copper is a case in point.
Stalled copper projects
Copper is not on the US critical minerals list but gets a special mention in Trump’s executive order, along with gold, uranium, potash and, if the chair of the National Energy Dominance Council so determines, any other element “such as coal”.
Copper has come to epitomize the problem of getting new mines up and running in the United States.
Rio Tinto bets on Trump support for long-stalled Arizona copper mine
Big copper projects such as Resolution in Arizona, Pebble in Alaska and Twin Metals in Minnesota have been stalled for years at the federal permitting stage.
All three could benefit from the change of political wind in Washington.
But opposition from Native Americans and environmental protection groups is not going to magically disappear at the stroke of a presidential pen. Indeed, it might well become more entrenched.
Big mining companies such as Rio Tinto, which owns a majority stake in Resolution, have learnt the hard way that mining without community consent is highly problematic.
The company has buy-in from both Serbian and European Union policy-makers for its giant Jadar lithium mine but progress has ground to a halt due to mass protests.
Extended timeline
The Resolution mine has the potential to become the biggest copper producer in North America, capable of meeting up to 25% of the United States’ annual copper demand.
The copper will come with byproducts such as bismuth, indium and tellurium, all of which are on the critical minerals list.
But even assuming accelerated permitting, the mine will still take around 10 years to construct, meaning the first copper concentrates would be produced only around the middle of the next decade.
Resolution is located in Arizona, which has a long history of mining and associated infrastructure.
The Pebble and Twin Metals projects face extra challenges in the form of physical remoteness and potential impact on salmon spawning grounds and the Boundary Waters Wilderness respectively.
Fast-tracking permitting for such projects doesn’t mean they’ll be ready to generate copper any time soon.
Processing gap
Rio’s Resolution mine could be integrated into the company’s existing Kennecott smelting and refining operations in Utah.
Kennecott, however, is only one of two active primary copper smelters in the United States. The other one is Miami in Arizona operated by Freeport-McMoRan. There has been speculation but so far no confirmation that Grupo Mexico might re-open its Hayden smelter in the same state.
The United States is already a net exporter of copper concentrates for want of sufficient processing capacity. Some 320,000 tons of contained metal in concentrates were shipped overseas last year, according to the US Geological Survey.
The three main destinations were Mexico, China and Canada. Clearly there is enough North American smelting capacity to absorb extra US mine production but the Biden administration’s policy of “friend-shoring” has been replaced with Trump’s tariff threats against the United States’ two neighbours.
Moreover, every copper smelter is currently competing with China, where smelting and refining capacity is huge and still growing.
Smelter margins are being squeezed in the form of historically low treatment charges for converting raw material into metal at historic lows.
Building sufficient domestic capacity to process extra US mine production could be a thornier problem than building the new mines in the first place.
Urban solution
The fixation on headline-grabbing mega mine projects to reduce US import dependency misses a far easier and lower-cost solution.
US processing capacity for recycling copper is growing.
Germany’s Aurubis AG has invested $800 million in a new smelter in Georgia for treating up to 180,000 metric tons of complex recyclables such as circuit-boards.
The United States is the world’s largest exporter of copper scrap to the tune of almost a million tons each year. Much of it is sent to China for processing.
Recycling all that lost metal at domestic facilities wouldn’t eliminate US copper import dependency but it would significantly close the gap.
Recycling comes with the benefits of an existing resource, low capital expenditure relative to new mines, shorter lead-times to production and lower carbon footprint.
The Trump administration’s rush to ditch anything associated with Biden’s green agenda risks overlooking the one part of the domestic copper supply chain that is already attracting investment and increasing capacity.
If “mine baby mine” is the mantra, channelling more federal funds into “urban mining” is going to reap faster rewards than any big new conventional mine.
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)
(Editing by David Evans)
Reuters | March 27, 2025 |
Image courtesy of The White House.
US President Donald Trump’s executive order on boosting domestic minerals production is intended to blast a path through the thicket of mine permitting in the United States.
It takes an average of nearly 29 years for a new mine to go from discovery to production in the United States, the second-longest lead time in the world after Zambia, according to S&P Global.
Permitting on Federal Land in particular is a big problem and one that the US government is uniquely qualified to solve.
The Joe Biden administration struggled to reconcile its ambition to produce more “green” metals for the energy transition with its environmental and social credentials.
Trump has no such qualms.
The Secretary of the Interior is instructed to “prioritize mineral production activities over other types of activities on Federal lands”.
But there is a danger that the political pendulum will swing too far the other way. There is also the problem that new mines still take many years to build and the US lacks the processing capacity to convert raw materials to metal.
Copper is a case in point.
Stalled copper projects
Copper is not on the US critical minerals list but gets a special mention in Trump’s executive order, along with gold, uranium, potash and, if the chair of the National Energy Dominance Council so determines, any other element “such as coal”.
Copper has come to epitomize the problem of getting new mines up and running in the United States.
Rio Tinto bets on Trump support for long-stalled Arizona copper mine
Big copper projects such as Resolution in Arizona, Pebble in Alaska and Twin Metals in Minnesota have been stalled for years at the federal permitting stage.
All three could benefit from the change of political wind in Washington.
But opposition from Native Americans and environmental protection groups is not going to magically disappear at the stroke of a presidential pen. Indeed, it might well become more entrenched.
Big mining companies such as Rio Tinto, which owns a majority stake in Resolution, have learnt the hard way that mining without community consent is highly problematic.
The company has buy-in from both Serbian and European Union policy-makers for its giant Jadar lithium mine but progress has ground to a halt due to mass protests.
Extended timeline
The Resolution mine has the potential to become the biggest copper producer in North America, capable of meeting up to 25% of the United States’ annual copper demand.
The copper will come with byproducts such as bismuth, indium and tellurium, all of which are on the critical minerals list.
But even assuming accelerated permitting, the mine will still take around 10 years to construct, meaning the first copper concentrates would be produced only around the middle of the next decade.
Resolution is located in Arizona, which has a long history of mining and associated infrastructure.
The Pebble and Twin Metals projects face extra challenges in the form of physical remoteness and potential impact on salmon spawning grounds and the Boundary Waters Wilderness respectively.
Fast-tracking permitting for such projects doesn’t mean they’ll be ready to generate copper any time soon.
Processing gap
Rio’s Resolution mine could be integrated into the company’s existing Kennecott smelting and refining operations in Utah.
Kennecott, however, is only one of two active primary copper smelters in the United States. The other one is Miami in Arizona operated by Freeport-McMoRan. There has been speculation but so far no confirmation that Grupo Mexico might re-open its Hayden smelter in the same state.
The United States is already a net exporter of copper concentrates for want of sufficient processing capacity. Some 320,000 tons of contained metal in concentrates were shipped overseas last year, according to the US Geological Survey.
The three main destinations were Mexico, China and Canada. Clearly there is enough North American smelting capacity to absorb extra US mine production but the Biden administration’s policy of “friend-shoring” has been replaced with Trump’s tariff threats against the United States’ two neighbours.
Moreover, every copper smelter is currently competing with China, where smelting and refining capacity is huge and still growing.
Smelter margins are being squeezed in the form of historically low treatment charges for converting raw material into metal at historic lows.
Building sufficient domestic capacity to process extra US mine production could be a thornier problem than building the new mines in the first place.
Urban solution
The fixation on headline-grabbing mega mine projects to reduce US import dependency misses a far easier and lower-cost solution.
US processing capacity for recycling copper is growing.
Germany’s Aurubis AG has invested $800 million in a new smelter in Georgia for treating up to 180,000 metric tons of complex recyclables such as circuit-boards.
The United States is the world’s largest exporter of copper scrap to the tune of almost a million tons each year. Much of it is sent to China for processing.
Recycling all that lost metal at domestic facilities wouldn’t eliminate US copper import dependency but it would significantly close the gap.
Recycling comes with the benefits of an existing resource, low capital expenditure relative to new mines, shorter lead-times to production and lower carbon footprint.
The Trump administration’s rush to ditch anything associated with Biden’s green agenda risks overlooking the one part of the domestic copper supply chain that is already attracting investment and increasing capacity.
If “mine baby mine” is the mantra, channelling more federal funds into “urban mining” is going to reap faster rewards than any big new conventional mine.
(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, Andy Home, a columnist for Reuters.)
(Editing by David Evans)
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