Copper prices must rise as supply crunch looms: Giustra

Copper prices will need to rise sharply as miners struggle to build enough new supply to meet demand from electrification, artificial intelligence and grid expansion, mining financier Frank Giustra says.

The copper price already reflects the coming supply crunch, climbing about 40% over the past year to a new record this month at $6.65 (C$9.17) per lb. before easing back. Traders are alreadyt pricing in tighter supply and stronger demand from power systems, data centres and infrastructure spending.

“The price of copper has to go up,” Giustra told Northern Miner Group affiliate Mining.com’s video host, Devan Murugan. “As these deficits come upon us, you’re going to require a higher copper price to incentivize the building of mines faster than we’ve been doing it in the past.”

Big porphyry copper deposits often take 10 to 15 years to move from discovery to production and sometimes closer to 20 years, Giustra said. That leaves the industry badly placed to meet demand from electric vehicles, renewable power, transmission buildouts and AI infrastructure.

Giustra, a 2025 Canadian Mining Hall of Fame inductee, helped co-found the companies that became Endeavour Mining (TSX, LSE: EDV) and Wheaton Precious Metals (TSX, NYSE, LSE: WPM), before turning to film production at Lionsgate Entertainment. Through Fiore Group, his recent ventures include West Red Lake Gold Mines (TSXV: WRLG), which brought Ontario’s Madsen gold mine to commercial production at the start of the year.

Few builds

A recent JPMorgan report forecast a 2-million-tonne copper deficit by 2030 that could widen to 8 million tonnes by 2035.

“That’s a lot of copper that’s projected not to be available for the demand that we’re seeing ahead of us,” Giustra said.

Few giant projects are ready to close that gap. There are only four near-surface copper deposits in the world with more than 1 billion tonnes, he said, underlining how thin the pipeline has become.

AI era

Data centres add a new layer of demand, Giustra said. The International Energy Agency expects their electricity use to more than double by 2030 as AI adoption spreads, raising the need for copper in transmission lines, substations, cooling systems and backup power.

“Data centres alone are projected to require about 500,000 tonnes of copper by 2030 just for the data centres,” Giustra said.

Keeping up would require mine building on a scale the sector is nowhere near achieving. “We need to find six of these kind of [1-billion-tonnes-plus] mines every year till the year 2050,” he said. “Six and put them into production.”

M&A wave

That shortage is likely to drive more dealmaking as producers compete for a shrinking pool of large copper assets.

The market, in his view, has not fully priced that scarcity yet. But if supply keeps falling behind demand, miners will need a much higher copper price to justify building the next wave of projects.

“This M&A has started,” Giustra said. “We’re not yet seeing the kind of M&A we’ve seen in the past. It will get there because, quite simply, there is a scarcity of these deposits.”