Copper
LME / COMEX
The metal of electrification: every grid upgrade, EV, and data center is a copper order.
Top Producers
share of 2024 mine production
Top Consumers
share of 2024 refined consumption
Main Uses
share of 2024 refined copper demand by end use (ICSG)
Top Exporters
share of refined copper cathode exports by mine-and-smelter producers, 2024 (ICSG / UN Comtrade); excludes China, which exports little refined cathode net of its dominant import demand
Top Importers
share of 2024 refined copper imports (ICSG / UN Comtrade)
World mine production
roughly 23 million tonnes
as of 2024
World refined consumption
roughly 27 million tonnes
as of 2024
China share of refined demand
roughly 55 percent
as of 2025
Record LME price
$14,527.50 per tonne intraday
January 29, 2026
Largest mine
Escondida, Chile: roughly 1.2 million tonnes per year
as of 2024
Copper in a battery-electric vehicle
roughly 50 to 80 kg, versus roughly 20 kg in a combustion car
as of 2025
Copper has been rerated from a construction-cycle metal into the bottleneck commodity of electrification. The world consumes roughly 27 million tonnes of refined copper a year, with China taking well over half, and the new demand layers stack on top of the old ones: a battery-electric vehicle contains roughly 50 to 80 kilograms of copper against roughly 20 in a combustion car, grid operators in the US, Europe, and China are in the largest transmission build-out in decades, and hyperscale data centers draw copper by the tonne for busbars, cabling, and cooling. That demand story carried LME copper to a record $11,104.50 a tonne in May 2024, and after the September 2025 Grasberg mine disaster in Indonesia knocked out one of the world's largest sources, the rally went vertical: a new record above $11,200 in late October 2025, through $13,000 in early January 2026, and an intraday peak of $14,527.50 a tonne on January 29, 2026.
Supply is struggling to answer. First Quantum's Cobre Panama mine, roughly 350,000 tonnes a year and about 1 percent of world supply, was ordered shut in November 2023 after Panama's Supreme Court ruled its contract unconstitutional, and it has sat idle since. Chilean grades keep falling; Codelco, still the largest producer, has been mining its lowest output in roughly a quarter century. The growth is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Ivanhoe's Kamoa-Kakula complex ramped past 400,000 tonnes a year and pushed the DRC past Peru into second place among mining nations. Meanwhile China built so much smelting capacity that spot treatment charges, the fee smelters earn for converting concentrate, went negative in 2025: smelters effectively paying miners for feed.
Copper trades on three venues at once: the LME 3-month forward is the global reference, COMEX is the US leg, and SHFE sets the tone in Asian hours. The May 2024 COMEX squeeze and the 2025 tariff arbitrage, when COMEX traded as much as roughly 28 percent over the LME before the July 30, 2025 cathode exemption crashed the premium in a day, showed that the three legs can disconnect violently when policy or positioning overwhelms the physical arbitrage.
How It Trades
| Venue | LME (global benchmark), COMEX (US), SHFE and INE (China) |
| Benchmark contract | LME Copper 3-month forward |
| Contract size | 25 tonnes (LME); 25,000 lb (COMEX) |
| Price terms | USD per tonne (LME); US cents per pound (COMEX) |
| Settlement | LME: physical delivery of warehouse warrants on the prompt date; most OTC swaps cash-settle against the LME official cash price. COMEX: physical delivery into CME-approved US warehouses. |
| Typical curve | Modest contango in surplus years, flipping to sharp backwardation when LME stocks run low; the cash-to-3s spread is the standard tightness gauge. |
| Liquidity | The deepest base metal market across the three venues combined; the most actively traded metal among funds, and the usual macro vehicle for expressing a China or electrification view. |
Where It Trades
approximate share of global daily exchange volume, 2025
Supply and Demand
Top producers
- Chile: roughly 5.3 million tonnes mined (2024), led by Escondida and Codelco's aging giants
- Democratic Republic of the Congo: roughly 3 million tonnes, the fastest-growing major producer (Kamoa-Kakula, Tenke Fungurume)
- Peru: roughly 2.6 million tonnes (Cerro Verde, Las Bambas, Antamina)
- China: roughly 1.8 million tonnes mined, but the dominant refiner with over half of world smelting capacity
- United States, Russia, Indonesia, Australia: roughly 0.8 to 1.1 million tonnes each
Mine supply is roughly 23 million tonnes a year. The pipeline of large new mines is thin: Cobre Panama has been shut since November 2023, Chilean ore grades decline every year, and most credible growth to 2030 is in the DRC and a handful of brownfield expansions.
Top consumers
- China: well over half of world refined demand
- European Union
- United States
- Japan, India, South Korea
Major uses
- Electrical wiring and grid infrastructure: roughly 65 percent of demand once building wire, cable, and equipment are combined
- Construction plumbing and architecture
- Transport, increasingly EVs and charging infrastructure
- Electronics and data centers
What Moves the Price
- Chinese credit impulse and construction activity, still the single biggest swing factor
- Grid investment, EV production, and data center build-out in the US, Europe, and China
- Mine disruptions: strikes, accidents (Grasberg 2025), political shutdowns (Cobre Panama 2023)
- Treatment and refining charges as the live indicator of concentrate scarcity
- LME, COMEX, and SHFE visible inventories
- US trade policy and the COMEX-LME arbitrage since 2024
- The US dollar and global rate expectations
Moments That Made the Market
1877
The London Metal Exchange is formally established; copper is one of its founding contracts.
1996
Sumitomo trader Yasuo Hamanaka's decade of hidden copper positions unravels with roughly $2.6 billion in losses, the biggest metals trading scandal of its era.
2008
The supercycle peaks with copper near $8,940 a tonne in July before the financial crisis cuts the price in half within months.
2011
Copper sets a then-record $10,190 a tonne in February on Chinese stimulus demand.
2023
Panama's Supreme Court ruling shuts First Quantum's Cobre Panama mine in November, removing roughly 1 percent of world supply.
2024
A COMEX short squeeze in May blows the US price more than $1,000 a tonne over the LME; LME copper sets a record $11,104.50.
2025
A Section 232 tariff drives the COMEX premium to roughly 28 percent before the July 30 cathode exemption crashes it in a day; the Grasberg mud rush in September cuts Indonesian supply and copper sets a new record above $11,200 in late October.
2026
The post-Grasberg rally accelerates: copper passes $13,000 a tonne in early January and spikes to an intraday record of $14,527.50 on January 29, 2026, before retreating.
What Changed Since the 2010 Handbook Era
- Electrification rerated copper: grids, EVs, and data centers now drive the marginal tonne, where 2010-era demand was almost entirely Chinese construction.
- The DRC went from a frontier story to the world's second-largest mining nation, overtaking Peru.
- China moved from buyer of refined metal to owner of most of the world's smelting capacity, pushing spot treatment charges negative in 2025.
- COMEX stopped being a sleepy satellite of the LME: the 2024 squeeze and the 2025 tariff arbitrage made the US contract a market in its own right.
- Supply growth stalled: ore grades fell, permitting slowed, and a single court ruling in Panama removed more capacity than most new mines add.