Name: Copper demand to outstrip supply: BloombergNEF
Uploaded: 2025-12-08T08:27:46.811Z
Duration: 3 min 35 s
Description: Kwasi Ampofo, analyst at BloombergNEF, says demand for copper is going to rise to about 50 million tonnes from 30 million tonnes in the next 25 years, and that miners will struggle to supply the market.

Kwasi Ampofo, analyst at BloombergNEF, says demand for copper is going to rise to about 50 million tonnes from 30 million tonnes in the next 25 years, and that miners will struggle to supply the market.

London

BloombergNEF's recent report indicates that copper demand is projected to outstrip supply due to the accelerating global energy transition. The increased use of electric vehicles and expansion of renewable energy grids are major factors driving up copper consumption, while supply remains constrained by long mine development timelines.

The report also underscores the growing importance of rare earth minerals for policymakers, particularly as China maintains significant control over their supply chains. Companies are ramping up mining investments and mergers, but experts warn that bridging the supply gap will be challenging in the near term.

Copper demand to outstrip supply: BloombergNEF

So BNF has been looking at the metals market and just published your latest outlook on how shifts within the energy sector are going to be shaping the metals market and that's a well-established link of course. What did you discover? I think the three main things that we discovered just like you mentioned copper trading at an all-time high and for us what we saw is that there's obviously a deficit as a result of the growth in demand we've seen in the market from transition from data scientists but then also at the same time unfortunately supply is constrained. The second thing that we also noticed is the fact that if you take commodities like rare earth for policymakers it's increasingly becoming the most important one for them over the last five years we've tracked incentives that policymakers have been putting in place to address supply gap and then we see that rare earth obviously becomes the most important. We have companies like Anglo-American Glencore starting to invest in mining again as opposed to returning money to shareholders and then the final thing is that our countries are working hard in terms of investment and fiscal policies to diversify from China. Yes absolutely so a lot in the report let's focus in on the copper story then you talked about that copper deficit we've got sort of structural issues around concern about tariffs in the United States but the underlying demand story also interesting so Kwasi talk me through what's driving that copper deficit. If you look at the electric vehicle compared to the traditional internal combustion engine you're looking at for copper consumption alone you're looking at multiple times the amount of copper that historically we're using in the normal cars and if you take even the amount of grid connection we need to connect all the solar panels that we built over the next 20 years we need quite a lot of that and if you see demand now currently we send close to about 30 million that could rise to about 50 million and that's a 20 million gap to be able to get the mines we need about close to 30 to 40 mines being open the next 25 years and we don't see that happening in the near term like you mentioned the inventory is really hot heads in the market and driving prices up. Okay yes so my next question was going to be whether companies are responding to this deficit and and trying to trying to fix it trying to provide more to the market I mean that sounds like a tough thing to be able to close that deficit gap so what are the chances that they will be successful these businesses? I would say they're doing quite a lot I mean we've seen the recent deal Anglo-American with tech we saw BHP try to also acquire Anglo-American we've seen quite a lot of M&A activities and for us at BNEF we tracked all the M&As that has happened the last five years and you can see that copper obviously stands out quite high followed by lithium and the rest but I think for now companies are trying but then on average it takes about 10 years to build a new mine so still a lot to be seen. Yeah okay so it takes it so there's a lead substantial lead time between the market giving these signals of deficit and and the extra product coming out of the ground and so what about rare earths you mentioned that as part of the conversation earlier Kwasi I mean why have rare earth minerals become as important as they are a lot of this has to do with technology electric vehicles energy transition all the rest. So there are two sides to that story there's obviously the demand side it's very critical to industries such as defense and energy transition you mentioned but then also it's also one of the few metals where China has complete total control both at the upstream and the downstream so if I was a policymaker in Brussels or DC and one of my most strategic minerals is totally under control at the upstream and the downstream by one country I'll be worried and as a result of that that's why we've seen a lot of policy focus going to address that gap.

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