In episode five of The Assessment, Charlie Edwards is joined by Caroline Bain, founder of Bain Commodities Research, and Natalie Scott-Gray, Senior Metals Demand Analyst at StoneX, to unpack the tightening outlook for the copper market. With ore grades falling at ageing mines and Chinese smelters facing record-low treatment charges, is the market heading for a structural deficit, or will new supply come through faster than expected?
Copper underpins the green transition, AI data centres, semiconductors and defence hardware, while China accounts for around half of global copper smelting and roughly 45% of refined production. Our experts discuss the effects of the Iran War and US tariffs on copper trade, China’s dominance of smelting, the EU’s supply-chain challenges, and what could push the market into a sustained surplus. The AI models face a particular challenge in this episode: with decades of statistics and a settled analyst consensus to draw on, can they do more than anchor on received wisdom? The question: will the ICSG report that global apparent refined copper usage grew by less than 1.0% year-on-year in any calendar year between 2026 and 2029? The experts and the AI models do not agree.
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