MethodologyContact usSupportLogin
Technology provider Metso has booked more than €250 million ($291 million) in contracts since December, and the world’s largest flash smelting furnace has started up at Kamoa-Kakula in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These developments indicate sustained investment despite historically low figures for copper concentrate treatment and refining charges (TC/RCs).
The continued investment contrasts with the strategic direction of established smelters. Mitsubishi Materials said on January 5 that it would scale-back copper concentrate processing and shift focus toward secondary smelting and e-scrap, citing “substantial decreases in TC/RC seriously [that were] affecting our businesses.”
But that has not stopped new smelting projects from advancing globally, with investments announced in Mongolia, Chile, Canada and the US in recent months.
Metso announced on January 9 that it had secured a €180 million order for engineering and key process equipment for a new primary copper smelter in Asia, with planned capacity for 300,000 tpy of copper cathodes and 1.1 million tpy of sulfuric acid.
The company did not disclose the buyer or the location of the project.
Metso has also secured contracts for concentrator equipment at several copper mining projects in recent weeks.
Gruvaktiebolaget Viscaria placed an order worth approximately €16 million for two horizontal grinding mills for its newly reopened copper mine at Kiruna in northern Sweden, Metso said on January 14. The mine has a production target of 120,000 tpy of copper concentrate, with Viscaria hoping to become Sweden’s second-largest copper producer.
In December, Harmony Gold Mining selected Metso to supply key equipment for its Eva copper project in Queensland, Australia, in an order valued at approximately €55 million. The project was expected to produce about 65,000 tpy of copper concentrate during its first five years of operation, with first production targeted for the second half of 2028, according to Metso.
Metso also announced on January 19 that Barrick Gold had selected its Concorde Cell flotation technology for the Lumwana expansion copper project in Zambia.
Separately, Metso announced on January 15 that its Direct Blister Furnace had been successfully started up at Kamoa Copper’s Kamoa-Kakula smelter in the DRC, with the first copper anodes having been cast in late December.
The 500,000 tpy furnace is the world’s largest licensed single flash smelting furnace by copper capacity, according to Metso. The company announced the contract for the furnace in November 2022.
Metso’s contracts were part of a broader wave of smelter investment announcements globally, even while current TC/RC levels challenge the economics of primary copper processing.
The government of Mongolia announced on January 7 that it was accepting proposals to invest in a $773 million copper concentrate smelting and refining plant.
In Canada, the federal government on December 17 opened a request for information, seeking stakeholder perspectives on establishing a copper smelter and refinery in western Canada, though it acknowledged that there were “significant economic headwinds” including historically low treatment charges.
Chilean state miner Codelco and miner-producer Glencore signed a memorandum of understanding on December 3 to develop a new copper smelter in Chile’s Antofagasta region, with capacity to process 1.5 million dry metric tonnes per year of concentrate, with construction envisioned to start in 2030 and operations to begin between 2032 and 2033.
This continued investment was coming despite structural cost disadvantages facing Western operators. China builds smelters at typically half the capital intensity of Western facilities, and sits at the bottom of the cost curve, according to Julian Kettle, vice chairman of metals and mining at Wood Mackenzie, speaking at the Financial Times Metals and Mining Summit in London in October.
Establishing sufficient Western smelting capacity could require investment of around $50 billion for 10 million tpy of capacity, Kettle estimated.
But some Western investment was advancing, particularly in secondary smelting. Aurubis ramped-up its Augusta multi-metal recycling plant in Richmond, in the US state of Georgia, last year and was considering whether to build a new primary copper smelter in the US as one of three strategic expansion options, with a decision expected in 2026, chief executive officer Toralf Haag told Fastmarkets during the London Metal Exchange’s LME Week event.
Haag highlighted the contrasting investment climates between the US and Germany. Aurubis in the US pays roughly one-third of the cost for energy compared with what it pays in Germany, he said.
“If you invest in Germany, [people ask] ‘what does it do to our environment?’ [In the US] they say, ‘Oh, you create wealth, you create jobs’,“ Haag said.
MMG’s zinc concentrate output rose 6% to about 232,000 tonnes, buoyed by a record performance at the Dugald River mine in Australia.
The investment wave has come while some established smelters were reassessing their primary processing operations.
Mitsubishi Materials president Tetsuya Tanaka said in his January 5 New Year message that the company found itself “at a crossroads, where we are being forced to radically review our business models.”
The Japanese smelter said that it would accelerate the global expansion of its resource circulation business through initiatives including the establishment of secondary smelting plants in Europe and the US, while scaling-back copper concentrate processing and consolidating production bases.
“Because there is a limit to the available supply of copper concentrates, the importance of recycled raw materials, including e-scrap, will only continue to grow,” the company said.
China’s top copper smelters agreed in late November to cut production by more than 10% in 2026 to counter overcapacity, while the China Nonferrous Metal Industry Association said that it had halted the creation of about 2 million tpy of planned new smelting capacity.
But market participants remained cautious about the effect of such announcements.
“At the moment, CSPT is very symbolic,” a mining source said.
And a Japan-based trader noted that, despite the talk of a production cut, “nothing [has] happened for now.”
Fastmarkets calculated the weekly copper concentrates TC index, cif Asia Pacific – the midpoint between smelter and trader buying points – at $(71.50) per tonne on January 16, down by $1.70 per tonne from $(69.80) per tonne a week earlier.