What Was the Highest Price for Copper?

What key factors drive the price of copper?

Robust demand has long been one of the strongest factors driving copper prices. The ever-growing number of copper uses in everyday life — from building construction and electrical grids to electronic products and home appliances — make it the world’s third most-consumed metal.

Copper’s anti-corrosive and highly conductive properties are why it’s the go-to metal for the construction industry, and it's used in products such as copper pipes and copper wiring. In fact, construction is responsible for nearly half of global copper consumption. Rising demand for new homes and home renovations in both Asian and Western economies is expected to support copper prices in the long term.

In recent decades, copper price spikes have been strongly tied to rising demand from China as the economic powerhouse injects government-backed funding into new housing and infrastructure. Industrial production and construction activity in the Asian nation have been like rocket fuel for copper prices.

Additionally, copper’s conductive properties are increasingly being sought after for use in renewable energy applications, including thermal, hydro, wind and solar energy.

However, the biggest driver of copper consumption in the renewable energy sector is rising global demand for electric vehicles (EVs), EV charging infrastructure and energy storage applications. As governments push forward with transportation network electrification and energy storage initiatives as a means to combat climate change, copper demand from this segment is expected to surge.

New energy vehicles use significantly more copper than internal combustion engine vehicles, which only contain about 22 kilograms of copper. In comparison, hybrid EVs use an average of 40 kilograms, plug-in hybrid EVs use 55 kilograms, battery EVs use 80 kilograms and battery electric buses use 253 kilograms.

In 2024, EV sales worldwide increased by 25 percent over 2023 to come in at about 17.1 million units, and analysts at Rho Motion expect that trend to continue in the coming years despite some headwinds in the near-term. Already in the first five months of 2025, EV sales were up 28 percent over the same period in the previous year.

On the supply side of the copper market, the world’s largest copper mines are facing depleting high-grade copper resources, while over the last decade or more new copper discoveries have become few and far between.

The pandemic made the situation worse as mining activities in several top copper-producing countries faced work stoppages and copper companies delayed investments in further exploration and development — a challenging problem considering it can take as many as 10 to 20 years to move a project from discovery to production. In addition, delayed investments amid the pandemic will also have long-term repercussions for copper supply.

There have also been ongoing production issues at major copper mines, most notably the shutdown in late 2023 of First Quantum Minerals' (TSX:FM,OTC Pink:FQVLF) Cobre Panama mine, which accounted for about 350,000 MT of the world's annual copper production.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting a 30 percent shortfall in the amount of copper needed to meet demand by 2035. “This will be a major challenge. It’s time to sound the alarm,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said.

The supply shortage has increased the need for end users to turn to the copper scrap market to make up for the supply shortage. Sometimes referred to as “the world’s largest copper mine,” recycled copper scrap contributes significantly to supplying and balancing the copper market.

Eleni Joannides, Wood Mackenzie's research director for copper, told INN by email at the end of Q4 2024 that there is recognition of the underinvestment in copper exploration, but she sees a new dawn emerging for the sector.

“We are seeing signs this could change. Much of the growth over the last five years has come from brownfield expansions rather than greenfield/new discoveries,” she said. “Technology will likely help increase the chance of discovery, and broadly I would say that policymakers are now more supportive of mineral exploration as the push to secure critical raw materials supply has moved up the agenda.”

Joannides offered some examples of greenfield projects in the pipeline: Capstone Copper’s (TSX:CS,OTC Pink:CSCCF) Santo Domingo in Chile, Southern Copper’s (NYSE:SCCO) Tia Maria in Peru and Teck Resources' (TSX:TECK.A,TECK.B,NYSE:TECK) Zafranal in Peru.

How has the copper price moved historically?

Taking a look back at historical price action, the copper price has had a wild ride for more than two decades.

Sitting at US$1.38 per pound in late January 2005, the copper price followed global economic growth up to a high of US$3.91 in April 2008. Of course, the global economic crisis of 2008 soon led to a copper crash that left the metal at only US$1.29 by the end of year.

Once the global economy began to recover in 2011, copper prices posted a new record high of US$4.58 per pound at the start of the year. However, this high was short-lived as the copper price began a five year downward trend, bottoming out at around US$1.95 in early 2016.

Copper prices stayed fairly flat over the next four years, moving in a range of US$2.50 to US$3 per pound.