Presentation to the International Mining and Resource Conference (IMARC), Sydney, October 2025
To answer the question …. The mainstream view is YES – we are not finding enough copper and gold. Some analysts and stock promoters then go on to say that the impending shortage will be so large that prices will “go to the moon”. MinEx’s view is that the story is much more nuanced.
The key observations are:
- Forecast demand for primary copper is expected to double by 2050.
Yes, its true that we are not finding enough new deposits …
- The number of new copper discoveries has dramatically dropped in recent years. Since 2010 …. only 207 Mt of copper (in 54 deposits) was found versus 272 Mt Cu mined, and 1967 Moz of gold (in 645 deposits) was found versus 1470 Moz Au mined
However, this doesn’t mean that we are running out of metal …
- When you add-in resource growth at existing mines & old discoveries the overall situation changes to one of a surplus not a shortfall. Since 2010 an extra 813 Mt of copper and 1582 Moz of gold was added to the global resource base. This is even after taking into account ore mined. In fact, for copper, the amount added to inventory from existing mines & old discoveries was twice that added from new discoveries.
But we aren’t out-of-the-woods …
- The challenge is that is becoming progressively harder and slower to convert a discovery into a mine. Presently, less than 15% of all copper deposits and 30% of gold discoveries are developed within 20 years of discovery. Key issues are poor project economics and ESG challenges.
So the real situation is that, in the short term to medium term (i.e. over next decade) the world is not running out of copper and gold. Instead, the rate limiting step for growing supply is the industry’s inability to build new mines. However, in the longer term (10-20 years out), the continued lack of exploration success will eventually bite. Obviously this situation needs to be reversed.