LME Week

LME Week 2025 opens for the lithium market amid rising uncertainty over China’s new export controls on battery materials, and a shifting outlook for domestic supply from lepidolite and salt-lake projects

The effect of the fatal rock burst at Codelco’s flagship El Teniente mine will be greater than initially expected, with copper production losses now forecast to reach 48,000 tonnes in 2025, the Chilean producer’s chairman has said.

The copper concentrates benchmark faces historic uncertainty as market participants gather for LME Week 2025, with potential for negative treatment and refining charges and growing regional divergence shaping the next phase of copper pricing.

LME Week 2025 arrives amid supply disruptions, evolving carbon policies and tariff tensions that continue to reshape the copper, aluminium and zinc markets.

Market participants shared insight into the market dynamics for copper, nickel, zinc, lead and tin during LME Week, which ran September 30-October 4

The Western world’s industrial strength is beginning to drop, but Jakob Stausholm, chief executive officer of Rio Tinto, said at a London Metal Exchange seminar that there was “plenty of demand to be unlocked from reindustrialization.”