Keynote address to the International Mining and Resource Conference (IMARC), Sydney 29th October 2024
Presentation:
and … Research Paper by Richard Schodde & Pietro Guj, Journal of Geosystems and Geoenvironment, 25 September 2024
Key observations are:
- Over the next decade, demand for primary copper is forecast to rapidly grow at 2-3% pa. This is driven by need to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.
- Mine production to increase from 22 Mtpa in 2024 to ~27 Mtpa by 2035. Analysts estimate that 12 Mt of new capacity is required.
- The number of new copper discoveries has halved in recent years. Of particular concern only 7 deposits >10 Mt Cu were found in the last decade
- It is becoming progressively harder and longer to convert a discovery into a mine. Current trends suggest that after 50 years only half of the metal found will be mined
- The above strongly suggests a shortfall in new copper supplies.
- However, taking an alternative approach to accounting for metal found (i.e. assigning it to the year it is added, rather than back-dating it to the discovery year) paints a different picture.
- Additional metal added to inventory from old discoveries (i.e. pre-2010) was twice as much as that from “new” discoveries (post-2010). Combining metal from old and new discoveries together results in 813 Mt of copper being added between 2010-2023. This is 3x that mined over the same period;
Given the above, copper resources will continue to grow over time – so no shortage! Ie, the World is not running out of copper! Notwithstanding this, we still need to continue to find new deposits …to replace what gets mined-out. So greenfield exploration success is still vital.