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When asked by LME chief executive Matthew Chamberlain what message he would leave the audience with about the strategic importance of metals, Holtum said: “Mining is not critical, refining and smelting is critical.”
The statement drew immediate reaction from industry participants, with commodities consultant and former Trafigura trader Samuel Basi writing on LinkedIn: “Interesting message from Trafigura CEO Richard Holtum at the LME seminar… ironically he followed the keynote speaker Kathleen Quirk, CEO of Freeport!”
The timing was striking given Quirk had used her keynote address earlier that morning to speak about the tragic loss of seven workers at Freeport’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia just a month prior, calling it a “humbling reminder” of the industry’s need to improve risk management.The mine disruption – and resulting concentrate shortage squeezing smelters globally – stressed how mining availability remains critical to the processing capacity Holtum was championing.
Holtum argued that while mining could be sourced from multiple locations globally, smelting and refining capacity created strategic dependencies.
“You can get stuff from a lot of different places in the world. Smelting is absolutely critical,” Holtum said. “If you don’t have it in your country, then you are at the mercy of someone that does and their ability to turn on or off that smelting capacity.”
He emphasized that specialty metals relied on traditional base metal processing infrastructure.
“You can’t have antimony without a lead smelter. You can’t have germanium, or gallium without zinc,” Holtum said. “If you want to refine gallium, you need a zinc smelter. So it really is a whole sort of focus on the different smelting processing capacity that exists in the countries that they’re in.”
Holtum used antimony production for a case study for government support of domestic processing.
He displayed a 130-year-old piece of antimony that had been used as a letterpress block, explaining it represented historical production that had ceased.
“Because of that Australian government support, we now have the ability to produce antimony in Australia,” Holtum said, referring to Nyrstar’s pilot project in Tasmania.
He added that commercial ramp-up would be completed in the first quarter of 2026.
“This is a fairly small investment by the Australian government, but it has enabled us to produce at an industrial scale antimony in a Western country… which hasn’t been the case for a long period of time,” Holtun said.Holtum praised Australia for being “the most forward leaning of any of the Western governments” in supporting smelting infrastructure, and said the United States also showed more interest following export controls and bans on certain critical metals.
His comments came a week after Australia announced a A$600 million ($395 million) bailout over three years for Glencore’s Mount Isa copper smelter and Townsville refinery on October 8.
However, Holtum indicated that Europe faced challenges given high energy prices and carbon emissions concerns.
“You’re not yet seeing the European Union, [or] the European member states have that same sort of forward leaning engagement with smelters that we’re seeing certainly in Australia and also in the US,” Holtum said.
He noted that the United States now has only one primary zinc smelter remaining.
The call for more smelting capacity comes while copper treatment and refining charges have plunged to their lowest level in 12 years, reflecting intense competition for scarce copper concentrates.Fastmarkets assessed the weekly copper concentrates TC index, cif Asia Pacific, at $(66.6) per tonne on Friday October 10, marking the eighth consecutive week of declines and the deepest negative level since Fastmarkets’ index was launched in 2013.
Rio Tinto copper chief executive Katie Jackson told the Financial Times Metals and Mining Summit on October 9 that the company’s US copper smelter was “a very challenging business to run at the moment.”
“I think, frankly, it’s been a very, it’s a very challenging business to run at the moment. That being said, high energy costs, low TC/RCs and copper prices, of course, are part of the operating cost picture,” Jackson said.
Jackson added, “these are also very long-term businesses and long-term investments. So I think we wouldn’t put tariffs in as part of our economic assumptions on the kind of long-term basis.”
Jackson also questioned whether current US tariff policies would achieve their stated aims of strengthening domestic value chains.
“I note the desire for full value chains in America, and I can understand why. I think it is good that governments understand more how metals value chains work and the importance of them,” Jackson said. “The current set of tariffs don’t strengthen the case for those full value chains quite in the way that the administration wants them to.”
BHP chief development officer Catherine Raw told the same summit that the company saw its copper business as having “four legs to a chair” – Escondida in Chile, Olympic Dam in Australia, the Vicuña joint venture with Lundin Mining in Argentina, and Resolution in Arizona with Rio Tinto.
Despite market attention on artificial intelligence and defense spending as new sources of copper demand, Holtum said traditional end-uses remained far more significant.
“Defense spending and AI clearly, you know, we’ve got a 90-minute session and we haven’t mentioned AI, which is great,” Holtum said. “But these are the buzzwords at the moment. But when we look at it… it’s a little bit of an incremental demand around these. For example, AI demand for copper is dwarfed three times by air conditioning copper demand this year.”
Holtum added, “so, yes, whilst everyone wants to talk about data centers and defense and that’s all great – actually, 90% of the demand for copper we see in the next 10 years comes from the traditional infrastructure, construction, urbanization, consumer goods, plants and power.”
Holtum also discussed how Trafigura navigated the US copper arbitrage this year, when elevated premiums attracted significant copper flows to the United States.
“I think the US has actually done a fantastic job because they have been able to attract a huge amount of copper to the US and really build up significant stock,” he said. “The arbitrage is still open to send copper to the US, and the US continues to attract more copper without actually spending any money.”
To learn more about what’s happening at LME Week 2025, visit our dedicated content hub where we’re regularly updating articles and insights from our metals market experts.