Copper Mines – Powering the Future.

Oct 2025 : As the world gets electrified, Copper is proving to be the metal of the moment, with its demand has just started surging. Industry experts have already forecasted that price of this versatile metal will rise from $ 4 to $ 5 per pound this decade, driven by surging need in EVs, clean energy, and digital infrastructure.

Copper is widely found in abundance. Amongst all the variants, it is the Porphyry copper deposits which are amongst the world’s biggest mining revenue sources. They can produce billions in annual revenue, produce copper at low cost, and operate for many decades. They are highly prized yet, and is becoming increasingly scarce, with a dramatic decline in the rate of discovery in recent decades.

With the world leaders are busy delving in ‘Renewable Energy’ and Decarbonisation Goals’, the roadmap has made Copper the new currency. Copper stands as the ubiquitous and indispensable commodity in the journey toward decarbonisation, with the green energy transition poised to ignite a significant surge in demand for this vital metal.

However, copper producers are less informed & thus ill-equipped to shoulder this critical role, facing the imminent threat of declining production due to a stubbornly sticky supply chain. Rising demand, declining production from the world’s existing, often aging copper mines, dramatically declining rates of discovery of new resources, and increasing difficulty in commissioning new mines, all suggests that the scarcity will play a role in future copper prices.

As reiterated, the world is facing the bilateral enigma; mitigating the scarcity, and exploring new sources. While scarcity can be well mitigated by sustainable mining alongwith manouvering redundancy; the experts are striving to explore new sources, and in addition gauging the effectiveness of this precious metal ores. The long exploration had unveiled an abundant source well mined in the American nation – Mexico.

Today within a very short span, Mexico not only has found itself a place amongst the top ten producer of Copper, but a host of metals. The No. 1 producer of silver, top 5 of each of lead and zinc; top ten producer of gold and copper. A rich geological endowment, a strong mining culture, and well developed infrastructure aid a large and growing mining industry.

With over 400,000 direct jobs and nearly 2 million indirect jobs stemming from its thriving mining sector, the country’s economic vitality is evident. In 2021 alone, Mexico’s mining production soared to a substantial US$16.7 billion, a testament to its growing influence in the industry.

Notably, copper production has experienced a remarkable threefold increase over the past decade, solidifying Mexico’s position as a key player in the market. Bolstering its status further, Mexico hosts the world’s 5th largest in-situ resource of copper. As investors increasingly recognise its potential, Mexico is poised to emerge as the next big player in global markets, evident from the impressive US$2.9 billion foreign direct investment (FDI) injection into its mining sector in the third quarter of 2023.

While there are many purposes for Copper’s properties in everyday life, here are some of the most noteworthy facts about copper:

• Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu. Atomic Number: 29. Atomic Weight: 63.546 AMU (atomic mass unit).

• Copper comes from the Latin word cuprum, meaning “from the island of Cyprus.”

• Copper is man’s oldest metal, dating back more than 10,000 years. A copper pendant discovered in what is now northern Iraq has been dated to about 8,700 B.C.

• The Egyptians had so many uses of copper that they used the ankh symbol to denote copper in their system of hieroglyphs. Copper also represented eternal life in their culture.

• The physical properties of copper are one of its most unique features. Other than gold, copper is the only metal that has natural colour. Other metals are either gray or white.

• Copper can be recycled without any loss in properties, making it a logical choice in an era of global sustainability.

• Over 400 copper alloys are in use today. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc, while bronze is an alloy of copper, tin, aluminium, silicon and beryllium.

• Copper is vital to the health of humans, animals and plants and an essential part of the human diet. Copper-rich foods include dried beans, almonds, broccoli, chocolate, garlic, soybeans, peas, whole wheat products and seafood.

• Copper maximises the performance of the products that contain it, helping save energy, CO2, money and lives.

• Copper is a vital, positive contributor to humankind and has improved our quality of life for centuries.

Despite an ever-increasing demand for copper, there is more of the metal available today than at any other time in history. This, together with the ability to infinitely recycle copper, means that society is extremely unlikely to deplete the copper supply, and copper will continue to contribute to global initiatives, like the SDGs and clean energy. The future availability of minerals is based on the concept of reserves and resources. Reserves are deposits that have been discovered, evaluated and assessed to be profitable. Resources are far larger and include reserves, discovered deposits that are potentially profitable and undiscovered deposits predicted based on preliminary geological surveys. Copper is naturally present in the Earth’s crust.

Global copper reserves are estimated at 870 million tonnes (United States Geological Survey [USGS], 2020), and annual copper demand is 28 million tonnes. Current copper resources are estimated to exceed 5,000 million tonnes (USGS, 2014 & 2017).

This is certainly not to be accepted as a discouraging data; since experts are continuously striving while exploring new sources. According to the USGS data, since 1950 there has always been, on average, 40 years of copper reserves and over 200 years of resources left.

Suvro Sanyal, Team Maverick.