The world’s largest copper miners predict closer collaboration with end users from carmakers to utilities, upending a hitherto fragmented supply chain as shortages of the metal crucial to green technologies are set to flare up in the years ahead. Executives at leading mining groups see increasing signs of a shift to direct deals with cable manufacturers and other big buyers to secure supply of the “metal of electrification” at an affordable price.
To date, the only major financing deal for copper by a car company with a miner — between which smelters and several layers of manufacturers and suppliers sit — has been Stellantis, owner of the Jeep, Fiat and Peugeot brands, with McEwen Copper, which faces a unique foreign currency issue in Argentina, where its project is.