Recently, MM Markets participated in a global podcast for The International Risk Podcast, free listen link here https://theinternationalriskpodcast.com/episode-170-copper-with-colin-bennett-and-krisztina-kalman/. The focus was the world of copper and its underpinning our societal move towards a clean and energy efficient world. Copper is used in most of the equipment that will tackle climate change. Mining and recycling of copper provides the material that we need for future technological development.
The largest copper demand products in the world are electrical such as power cable, magnet wire and building wire. The largest demand markets in world are electrical power such as power distribution, power transmission and appliances. The major organisations are the mining companies who provide the raw material, further details on production can be read in ICSG’s World Copper Factbook. The important wider value chain, through which copper is formed for use, includes fabricators (see IWCC for more details) and smelters and important entities such as the London Metal Exchange.
Upwards of a third of copper demand is met by recycled material and therefore virgin material provides an essential two-thirds. Recycling capacity and scrap processing is an international trade flow and partnerships and alliances are the future. Indeed, the goods and equipment that we buy contain a lot of materials and collectively these are creating urban mines – millions of tonnes of materials are in use in the world and this is the scrap recycling of the future.
In regard to technological development, the green energy transition is the major demand pull for copper and new mine technologies are on the production side. On the production side, the aim is to decarbonize the sector and this is being fulfilled through increased use of tools such as electric fleets and ore technologies which extract the largest amount of material.
Over the last few years, many countries, regions and jurisdictions have been busily creating lists of critical and strategic materials. You can view the various, and varying lists, on the Internet. The purpose of the lists is to establish which materials are critical versus strategic, for future societal and economic development. In regard to criticality, for example, the key players in the field are government departments, organisations such as the US Geological survey and the British geological survey, as they are mapping out availability and determining if a material is critical or not. MM Markets is across all of these factors and issues.
Thank you, and until next time!
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