The Thinning Ore
Electrification runs on copper, and the planet is not short of copper. It is short of rich copper. Ore grades have thinned for a century, so the amount of rock moved for every tonne of metal keeps climbing — and the arithmetic is now showing up in prices, in projects, and in the gap between what the world will want and what the mines can deliver.
Tonnes of ore run through the mill for every tonne of recoverable copper at Freeport-McMoRan’s U.S. mines — the arithmetic of a 0.29% ore grade at 82.6% recovery, both reported for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. Waste rock stripped to reach that ore is on top.
A fraction of a percent
Copper ore is graded in tenths of a percent. Every step down the ladder multiplies the mountain that has to be dug, hauled, crushed and floated to get the same tonne of metal out the other end.
The DRC’s sediment-hosted ore at Kamoa-Kakula assays about fifteen times richer than the porphyry ore in Arizona. Same metal, same market price — sixteen times less rock. Ratios are computed from reported grade and recovery; see notes.
Two hundred and twenty-five, then fourteen
Thin ore would matter less if we kept finding thick ore. We have largely stopped: of the 239 copper deposits found between 1990 and 2023, only 14 were found in the last decade of that span.
And a find is not a mine: the pipeline typically runs 17 years from discovery to first metal, and in Latin America the capital intensity of expanding an existing mine has risen 65% since 2020 — close to the cost of building a new one.
Where the lines cross
Refined copper demand was almost 27 Mt in 2024 and reaches roughly 33 Mt by 2035 on the IEA’s stated-policies path. The mines that exist plus the mines that are announced peak a little above 24 Mt in the late 2020s — then fall away as grades drop and reserves run out.
Projections, not measurements. The IEA’s 30% figure compares the announced mine pipeline with primary (mined) requirements in 2035 under STEPS; the shortfall widens to 35% on the Announced Pledges path and past 40% in Net Zero. Even the high-production case leaves 20% uncovered.
Two countries, a third of the metal
Chile and the Democratic Republic of the Congo between them mined 8.6 of the world’s 23.0 million tonnes in 2024. Smelting and refining is tighter still: China ran about 12 of the 27 million tonnes of refined copper — roughly 45% of global output.
Schematic map — simplified outlines, not survey-accurate borders. Shading bins countries by 2024 mine output.
Mostly buildings, increasingly cars
Copper’s largest customer is still the built environment — wiring, plumbing, roofing, cabling. Its fastest-growing customer is the vehicle: a typical electric car needs about six times the mineral inputs of a combustion car, and copper is the bulk of that.
What lean ore costs
Thin ore turns up in three places: the price, the cash cost of production, and how much damage a single accident can do to global supply.
Copper can be remelted indefinitely without losing its properties, yet secondary supply covered under 17% of demand in 2024 — down from 18% in 2015, squeezed by fast-growing demand, scrap export restrictions and thin recycling margins. With serious collection policy the IEA puts it near 35% by 2050.
The shortage is not of copper. It is of rich, permitted, financed ore.
The crust is not running out. The USGS’s global assessment counts 1.5 billion tonnes of identified copper still in the ground and an estimated 3.5 billion tonnes undiscovered, against 980 million tonnes of reserves and about 0.6 billion tonnes mined in all of history. What is scarce is ore rich enough to be worth the diesel, the water and the tailings dam — permitted, financed, and delivered inside the seventeen years a mine takes. Every tonne of copper kept in circulation is a tonne nobody has to move 400 tonnes of rock to find.
Send metal back, not to landfill
Old wiring, motors, pipe, cable offcuts and dead electronics are ore at 60–100% grade. Take them to a scrap-metal or e-waste facility rather than the bin — secondary supply is the only source that can scale in under a decade.
Make the metal last longer
Repair and keep devices, motors and appliances in service. The copper in a phone or a drill is trivial to lose and expensive to replace — the demand curve is built from replacement cycles.
Specify for the constraint
Where codes and conductivity allow it, aluminium substitutes for copper in cable, busbar and radiators — a standard, and now routine, response to sustained high prices.
Read supply news as grade news
When a miner reports lower output, the reason is usually not the market. It is a planned drop in feed grade — the quiet variable behind headline copper prices.
Where every number came from
- U.S. Geological SurveyMineral Commodity Summaries 2025 — Copper (January 2025)2024 world mine production 23,000 kt and by country; refinery production 27,000 kt; reserves 980,000 kt; U.S. end-use shares (Copper Development Association); COMEX price projected to average $4.20/lb in 2024.
- International Energy AgencyGlobal Critical Minerals Outlook 2025 (May 2025)Refined demand 26.7 Mt (2024) → 33 Mt (2035) → 37 Mt (2050), STEPS; mined supply 22.8 Mt in 2024, peaking a little above 24 Mt in the late 2020s and below 19 Mt by 2035; 30% mined-supply shortfall by 2035 (35% APS, >40% NZE, 20% high-production case); average mine grade down 40% since 1991; 14 of 239 deposits discovered 1990–2023 came in the last decade; ~17-year lead time; Latin American brownfield capital intensity up 65% since 2020; secondary supply under 17% of demand in 2024; data-centre demand 250–550 kt in 2030.
- Freeport-McMoRanForm 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (filed August 6, 2026)U.S. mills: 0.29% average copper ore grade, 82.6% recovery, 336,700 t/day milled; U.S. leach ore 0.19%; South America mills 0.29%; Indonesia 0.91%; realized price $6.25/lb; unit net cash costs $2.94/lb; Indonesian production 205 vs 359 million lb year on year after the September 2025 Grasberg mud-rush incident.
- BHPOperational review for the half year ended 31 December 2025 (SEC Form 6-K, January 2026)Escondida concentrator feed grade 0.93% (1.03% a year earlier), FY26 guided to 0.85–0.90%.
- Ivanhoe Mines2024 production results, Kamoa-Kakula Copper Complex (8 January 2025)11.362 Mt of ore milled at 4.46% copper, 86.5% recovery, 437,061 t of copper in concentrate.
- International Energy AgencyThe Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions (2021)A typical electric car requires about six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car.
Rock-per-tonne ratios are this edition’s arithmetic on company-reported figures — 1 ÷ (ore grade × reported recovery) — not published values. They count ore fed to the mill only; waste rock stripped to reach that ore is additional. Escondida’s recovery is not given in the same disclosure, so only its grade is plotted. IEA figures for 2030–2050 are scenario projections (STEPS), not measurements.