Oil$: "Copper Hits Record Highs While Smelters Lose Money on Every Ton," by Michael Kern.
"Copper hit an all-time high of $14,779 a ton on the London Metal Exchange [LME] this week even as global smelting margins collapsed to zero." The 2026 benchmark treatment + refining charge fell to $0 a ton, the lowest on record, with spot rates turning negative as smelters compete for scarce concentrate.
"China's smelting dominance, Indonesia's new capacity + looming US tariffs are reshaping who controls value across the global copper supply chain." Copper is trading at record prices, yet people who turn raw ore into usable metal can't make money doing it. "That's the copper market right now, and it says more about who actually controls the world's most important industrial metal than any single price headline does."
"COMEX copper in the US is trading near $6.75 a pound, pulled higher by the same forces driving London." None of that is showing up in smelter profits. The 2026 benchmark treatment + refining charge, the fee miners pay smelters to turn concentrate into finished metal, hit zero, down from $21.25 in 2025 + $80 in 2024. Spot rates went further, dropping to roughly negative $127 a ton by midyear, meaning smelters are effectively paying miners for the right to process their own ore.
China smelts roughly half the world's copper + has driven more than 90% of global smelting capacity growth since 2005, tightening its grip on the processing side of the business even as it squeezes its own margins. Beijing built that capacity assuming mine supply would keep pace—which failed to materialize—thus that gap is now the defining fact of the copper market.
Chile posted its weakest second-quarter output in at least 19 years. Antofagasta's first-half production fell 9.5%. Congo's Kamoa-Kakula + Indonesia's Freeport operations both saw disruptions, + Panama's Cobre Panama mine remains shut amid an ongoing legal fight with the government.
More capacity chasing the same shrinking pool of concentrate means negative treatment charges look less like a blip, more like the new normal. "Don't worry, be happy,' just doesn't cut it any more.
