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    Copper price hits new $13,000 LME record: supply and cost signals for mine planners

    January 5, 2026|

    Reviewed by Tom Sullivan

    Copper price hits new $13,000 LME record: supply and cost signals for mine planners

    First reported on MINING.com

    30 Second Briefing

    Copper futures on the London Metal Exchange briefly hit a record $13,020/t on Monday before easing to about $12,500/t, capping a 43% annual gain in 2025 that made copper the LME’s best-performing industrial metal since 2009. Supply fears stem from disruptions at Grasberg (Indonesia), Kamoa-Kakula (DRC) and a strike at Chile’s Mantoverde mine, with ING and Marex strategists citing years of underinvestment and speculative money driving a “topsides” bid. US tariff threats have pushed the country’s inventories to roughly half of global stocks despite under 10% of demand, leaving LME spreads in firm backwardation and China Securities forecasting a >100,000 t global shortage in 2026.

    Technical Brief

    • LME benchmark futures intraday move reached +4.3%, peaking near $13,020/t before retracing.
    • Grasberg (Indonesia) and Kamoa-Kakula (DRC) outages are explicitly cited as 2025 supply disruption drivers.
    • A strike at Mantoverde mine in Chile is currently constraining output and feeding speculative positioning.
    • Marex’s Al Munro characterises current pricing as a “speculative money-led bid” focused on Q1 2026 upside.
    • ING’s Ewa Manthey links tightness to “years of underinvestment”, mine disruptions, tariff uncertainty and stockpiling.
    • UBS estimates 2025 refined copper was technically in surplus, but trade flows were distorted by US tariff actions.
    • UBS notes the US now holds ~50% of global exchange inventories while representing <10% of global demand.
    • Cash-to-three-month LME spread remains in firm backwardation, signalling acute near-term physical tightness.
    • China Securities projects a >100,000 t refined copper deficit in 2026 from combined global and regional dislocations.

    Our Take

    The new $13,000/t copper level comes after a sequence of record-setting moves tracked in our database through late December 2025, where LME prices first pushed above $11,800/t and then $12,282/t, signalling that today’s spike is part of an ongoing squeeze rather than a one‑off event.

    With the US holding roughly half of visible copper inventories but accounting for less than 10% of demand, the tariff‑driven stock build highlighted in the 22 December 2025 piece has effectively concentrated market power in CME‑deliverable warehouses, amplifying price volatility on both LME and US contracts.

    BloombergNEF’s projection of a structural copper deficit from 2026 in the 17 December 2025 analysis suggests that assets like Grasberg, Kamoa-Kakula and Mantoverde in Indonesia, the DRC and Chile will have outsized leverage in offtake and financing negotiations as disruptions or expansions at these mines can materially move benchmark prices.

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    Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.

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