Is copper THE most critical metal? It always has been

Prior to the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries the demand for metals was not very high. The small county of Cornwall in south-west England was the major producer of copper and tin in the mid 19th century, when world production of copper was about 60,000 tonnes per year. The copper ores were of very high grade and needed little upgrading, apart from simple hand sorting and crude gravity methods.

The second industrial revolution, the 'discovery' of electricity, had a profound effect on metal demand, particularly for copper. By the beginning of the 20th century the demand had increased by an order of magnitude, such that the 'easy' ores were becoming scarce and the simple sorting and gravity methods could not adequately treat the ever decreasing grades and complexity of the vast quantities of copper deposits which were available in the Americas and Australia.

A reminder of when Cornwall ruled the copper and tin mining world

The mining industry was in crisis, and so was the industrialised civilisation, although most people would not have been aware of this. The search was on for an innovative method of upgrading the low grade base metal ores, and the great saviour of the mining industry was froth flotation.

The invention of modern flotation is attributed to Francis Elmore, who patented a vacuum flotation process in 1904, which was used in the Zinc Corporation plant in Australia for 6 years, although the first recognisably "modern" flotation technique had been patented in London in 1903 by Sulman and Picard, and this used air bubbles formed by forcing compressed air through holes in the cell, but it would be years before such pneumatic cells would be commercially used. By 1908 flotation was working well for bulk flotation of zinc tailings, but the search was then on for means of treating primary sulphides, which led to the development of xanthate collectors, selective activators and depressants, and, as they say, "the rest is history". 

Just as it is difficult to overestimate the importance of the mining industry, so it is difficult to overestimate the value of froth flotation to modern society. How would we economically produce the metals and minerals that modern society cries out for without this process, which I have always referred to as the most important technological development since the discovery of smelting? Throughout the century, as the available ores became leaner and more complex, so flotation was adapted to effectively deal with them, and to this day research both into the physical and chemical aspects of flotation continues unabated as evidenced by the response already to next year's Flotation '25, which is a year and a half away.

Now we are into the 4th industrial revolution where annual copper production is around 25 million tonnes but all analysts forecast that much more will be needed to satisfy the hunger for renewable energy requirements and the production of electric vehicles. 

The International Energy Forum has assessed that the world will need to significantly increase its copper production to meet electrification goals, with a 115% increase in copper production in the next 30 years compared to what has currently been mined up to now, equivalent to  bringing 55% more new mines into production than would otherwise be needed.

The report called for immediate attention from governments and industry to work together to meet the world’s growing copper needs. The shortfall is in part because of the permitting process for mining companies. The average time between discovering a new copper mineral deposit and getting a permit to build a mine is about 20 years. 

The industry is in crisis once more but this time it is unlikely that a major breakthrough in technology will provide the answer, it mostly comes down to money. New deposits are getting harder, and costlier, to extract as ore grades fall, meaning more ore needs to be mined to secure the same amount of metal. Growing scrutiny of the environmental costs of copper mining is also discouraging more investment. 

There has been significant movement within the copper sector to increase production intensity and copper has become a major focus for the likes of Anglo American and BHP, with the two huge companies currently in the midst of an ongoing takeover tussle for Anglo’s copper stronghold. A merger would see BHP assume control of some of the world’s largest copper mines in Chile and Peru, with assets reported to be around US$35 billion.

Renewable energy technologies, clean water, wastewater, electricity cannot exist without copper, which is likely to be the key commodity in the next few decades. Solar and wind farms, often spread out over large areas, require more copper per unit of power produced than do centralised coal and gas-fired power stations. Electric vehicles use more than twice as much copper as petrol cars do.

Although more copper is being recycled, it won’t be enough to cover demand, so the only alternative is to mine more and to develop secondary processing routes, as much copper and other critical metals are tied up in the tailings dumps of many years ago. 

We will hear much of critical metals such as battery metals and rare earths at MEI's inaugural Critical Minerals '24 in November, but hopefully we will hear about copper too, which remarkably was only recently added to America's list of critical metals. The deadline for abstracts for the conference is the end of this week.

#CriticalMinerals24