Copper is one of the most widely used industrial metals after steel and aluminum, but until recently it wasn’t really part of the conversation. What’s changed? Why is it suddenly being called a critical mineral?

Copper is basically everywhere there’s electricity, and its growth driver is not market-specific. Unlike lithium, where a big part of the growth story is tied to electric vehicles, copper demand is being driven by electrification across the board, from power grids, buildings and electric vehicles to a whole host of other uses.

What makes it critical is the gap that’s opening up between supply and demand, as the latter continues to climb. At 25 million tons today, demand could rise to 35 or even 40 million tons in the next 15 to 25 years. At the same time, production is expected to stay flat or even decline. That creates a pretty significant mismatch. You can already see that tension showing up in prices, as over the past decade these have doubled.

In volume terms, copper is nowhere near steel. We produce almost 2 billion tons of steel a year, compared with about 25 million tons of copper. But once you look at market value rather than tonnage, the difference starts to narrow because the price points are so different.

Why is production not keeping pace?

There are a few reasons. For one, developing a new copper mine is a very long process; on average, it can take around 13 years from identifying a promising deposit to producing the first gram.

The other issue is ore quality. Over time, grades have fallen sharply because the easiest and richest deposits were mined first, being close to the surface. When copper mining began on an industrial scale, around 1800, grades could be close to 20%. Today, we’re often talking at around 0.5%. The best resources have already been exhausted, and it’s necessary to go far deeper to find good quality ore. At a grade of 0.5%, you have to move and process some 200 tons of rock to produce just one ton of copper. This is why the cost of production has risen so much in recent years.

From an technology investment perspective, where are the real bottlenecks, and where does that create room for innovation?

There are two sides to this: the technical challenge and the geopolitical one. Copper doesn’t come out of the ground as metal. It’s generally found in two forms: oxides and sulfides. Oxides tend to be closer to the surface, they’re easier to process and can often be processed at the mine site. But they only account for a relatively small share of deposits: about 20%, shrinking to 10%. Sulfides are deeper and much more demanding to process, both in terms of energy and technology.

That’s where the geopolitical piece comes in. Over the past few years, a large share of sulfide refining capacity has become concentrated in China, which now accounts for around half of the total. So a country like Chile, the world's largest producer, exports between 70% and 80% of its copper to China for processing, giving up much of the control of that part of the value chain. Now, why don’t we simply build more processing capacity in Chile or elsewhere in the West? Because of environmental constraints, as well as economics, technology and geopolitical issues, which all overlap. That combination is what makes copper a critical mineral.

Then there’s the investment horizon. These projects take years to develop, which makes it very difficult to make a decision today, when there’s so much risk and uncertainty as to the main drivers. Although we think copper prices are likely to continue rising, no one really knows where they’ll be 15 years down the line.

And there is another limit: demand isn’t completely inelastic. Copper can only get so expensive before people start looking seriously at substitutes. Today, it’s still the electrical and thermal conductor of choice, but if prices rise too high, technologies with a slightly lower performance but much lower cost start to become much more attractive.

Given this scenario, why is copper an investment theme for a corporate venture capital firm such as TechEnergy Ventures?

The thesis is quite straightforward and it has two parts. The first is simple: we need more copper to close the gap. So, we’re interested in technologies that can unlock resources to help us extract or produce more copper. Precision extraction is a good example. It borrows know-how used in oil and gas, allowing us to target deposits much more selectively than conventional open pit mining. That opens up opportunities such as smaller deposits that don’t justify a huge mine development, or resources that sit outside the volumes that a traditional operation would extract. The copper is there, but the challenge is finding a way to extract it economically.

The second part is more technical and has to do with processing. Most copper deposits are sulfides, generally treated through pyrometallurgical processes. We’re interested in technologies that could process those sulfides through hydrometallurgy instead, which is the route more commonly used for oxides.

Why does that shift matter so much, and what could it unlock if it worked at scale?

For a few reasons. The first is geopolitical: you reduce dependence on China by not sending an intermediate product such as copper concentrate there for processing because you can do that locally. Then there’s a practical technical advantage. Most mines start out processing oxides and later transition to sulfides, so they often already have a hydrometallurgical infrastructure in place. The problem is that once they shift to sulfides, that capacity is underused. If a technology existed that could process sulfides using that same route, they’d be able to make much better use of existing infrastructure.

The chemistry is the hard part. Take chalcopyrite, the most common copper sulfide. If you treat it with acid, it forms what’s called a passivation layer—basically an impermeable coating that stops the acid from reaching the copper and it can't be extracted anymore. You can keep adding acid but very little happens. With oxides, it’s different: the acid dissolves the copper into ionic form, and then electrowinning uses electricity to turn those ions back into metal.

Advanced leaching technologies are trying to get around that problem, either by preventing the passivation layer from forming, or by breaking it down in some way. Bioleaching is one route: you use microbes in an acidic environment to process sulfides using the hydrometallurgical method. Some approaches work by identifying the microbial community already present in the storage facility and introducing the organisms best suited to that purpose. Others add inputs that effectively act as superfood for those microbes. And it's not only biology: there are also chemical routes, using both organic and inorganic compounds.

This also ties back to the first part of our thesis. A mine doesn’t switch from oxides to sulfides immediately; there’s always a moment when both are present. If you treat the part of the rock that is already sulfide with acid, you can’t recover anything from it. Advanced leaching means more copper can be extracted during that transition period from the resources that are already there.

How does being part of the Techint Group help in this context?

When it comes to copper, I think the Techint Group is extremely well positioned. Geography is a big part of that: around 40% of the world's copper is mined in Latin America. Chile is the largest producer, followed by Peru and Bolivia. Argentina hasn’t produced copper since 2018, but there are now several projects moving forward at different stages of development, and a more supportive incentive environment.

And then there is the Group's presence across the value chain. Techint Engineering & Construction already gives us direct exposure to mining and copper projects. Tenova adds another layer, with TAKRAF on the upstream, extraction and mechanical side; as well as business units dedicated to pyrometallurgy furnaces. Also, Tenova Advanced Technologies in Israel is working on solvent extraction and electrowinning. Our energy company Tecpetrol is moving into the mining industry through its investments in lithium. And with Ternium and Usiminas, the Group already has experience managing mining assets.

Where do you see TechEnergy Ventures looking next in critical minerals?

Copper is where we see one of the clearest opportunities right now, and that’s already reflected in price. Just to take one indicator, the market opportunities are pretty clear, and the potential impact of new technology is significant. That's why we want to increase our investments in copper.

We already have a position in lithium, and we’ve been looking at other critical minerals, such as rare earths. There, however, we see a more integrated market opportunity, with more potential in the broader development of the asset itself, rather than purely from the point of view of technological innovation. In Brazil, there are rare earth resources that aren’t currently being developed, so it could make sense for us to look at these opportunities more closely and analyze whether there’s a role for us to play.