Copper is booming.
The world's third most used metal has been around for millennia, digging civilisation out of the Stone Age. But now it is powering the energy transition.
Prices are up a fifth this year. Desire for the red metal was behind BHP's aborted £38.6bn bid for rival miner Anglo American. Hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand reckons prices could almost quadruple to $40,000 a tonne over the next few years.
There are more grassroots signs of increasing value too: theft of copper cable is up 20 per cent on last year in southern England, reports the Hampshire and Isle of Wight police.
Copper's industrial applications in power grids, factories and solar panels make it a proxy for economic growth and explain its "Dr Copper" sobriquet. The greening economy should boost demand, which is set to almost double by 2035, reckons S&P Global Commodity Insights. Electric vehicles use four times as much copper as their analogue peers, for instance.
The future is not all shiny. China, the biggest consumer, front-ended a lot of metal buying last year. The country is not about to embark on a building frenzy regardless of what one thinks about Beijing's rescue plan for its sickly real estate sector.
