Mapped: Zinc's Use Across Five Industries and the 2030 Demand Outlook
Source: International Zinc Association, Driving Growth Across Markets: Annual Report 2025
The world's top 25 copper miners produced this in Q4 2025.
It still isn't enough....
๐ฅ BHP: 490,500 tonnes down 4% YoY
๐ฅ Codelco: 397,076 down 3.2% YoY
๐ฅ Freeport-McMoRan: 290,299 down 38.5% YoY
The largest producers are all declining yoy.
Meanwhile the energy transition, EV buildout, and AI data center boom all need copper at a scale this chart cannot support.
The supply response isn't coming fast enough.
New mines take 10-16 years from discovery to production.
The miners on this list are already struggling to hold flat output at existing operations.
Glencore +8.8%.
Teck +9.8%.
CMOC +13.6%.
The winners are gaining share but the total pool isn't growing at anything close to the rate demand requires.
The commodity nobody talks about is the one the entire modern economy runs on.
Copper is about to enter a supercycle
Yes, Hormuz is bad and could get worse, but let's zoom out
The main drivers for copper prices in the past 175 years were:
- Increased industrialization and electrification
- Times of war or supply chain disruptions
- Post-war rebuilding
See where I am going with this... This resembles exactly our current situation, just on a much larger scale.
- The West has to rebuild its industrial base to gain independence from China
- We are electrifying everything
- We are witnessing one of the biggest supply chain disruption in history
- Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Israel, and Lebanon have to be rebuilt
All while copper supply has been underinvested in for over a decade
The age of copper is upon us