LME Copper Logs Longest Weekly Run in Three Decades as Physical Supply Shrinks
Ten straight weekly gains have pushed LME copper benchmark prices to $14,300 a ton, within $227 of the all-time record, as mine disruptions across multiple continents tighten the physical market.
LME copper benchmark prices closed a tenth consecutive weekly gain through Friday (2026-09-04), settling near $14,300 a ton and within $227 of the all-time record of $14,527, the longest weekly winning streak since 1994, oilprice.com reported.5
The physical market underneath the price move is getting thinner with each leg higher. Mine disruptions in Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo, together with a separate outage, could remove 400,000 tonnes of refined copper from global supply in 2025, according to the Economist. Exchange inventories have not replenished at any pace that suggests those losses are being absorbed.1
Goldman Sachs raised its end-2026 price target by more than 10% during the week of June 1 (2026-06-01), lifting the forecast to $13,735 a ton from a prior $12,465. Spot prices have since run roughly $565 above Goldman's revised figure. When the bank made its upgrade, copper in London was trading just above $14,000; the rally has since left even that bullish case below the market.3
Standard & Poor's has described copper's strategic role in blunt terms, declaring it "the new oil." Mining veteran Robert Friedland repeated the characterisation on Bloomberg Odd Lots, noting that previous generations fought wars over crude oil and that copper now holds a comparable position in the global energy transition.6
Demand forecasts are not straightforwardly supportive of the rally. Data centres are expected to consume roughly 300,000 tonnes of refined copper in 2026, around 1% of global output, according to the Economist. Electric vehicles, meanwhile, are using less of the metal per unit than they did five years ago: a 2025-model EV requires approximately 10% less copper than one built in 2020, as manufacturers have cut wiring and refined powertrain design. The efficiency trend does not reverse the demand growth story, but it does slow the rate at which electrification alone absorbs global production.1
Governments are not waiting on price signals to rebalance supply geography. Public financing commitments for critical mineral supply chains more than quadrupled between 2023 and 2025, reaching approximately $65 billion, according to the IEA. The scale and pace of that commitment reflects anxiety about geographic concentration in a small number of producing countries, not just near-term scarcity.4
Geopolitical stress is extending that anxiety. Miners from Indonesia and Africa are scrambling for alternative copper and nickel processing routes as Middle East conflict disrupts established supply chains, the Economist reported in May (2026-05-19). A prolonged constraint on the Hormuz corridor would add a logistics cost layer on top of an already stressed production base.2
The $50 billion merger between Anglo American and Teck Resources, triggered in part by elevated copper prices, points to where producers expect the market to remain. Consolidating reserves and processing capacity at scale is a hedge against rising capex costs and government pressure for supply-chain reshoring — a bet on sustained tightness rather than a cyclical correction.1
Goldman's end-2026 forecast of $13,735 a ton now sits roughly $565 below spot. Fourth-quarter production reports from Chile and the DRC provide the next concrete read on the physical market: if those disruptions persist rather than partially recover, the tightness that has sustained ten consecutive weekly gains through September 4 (2026-09-04) has room to carry prices further toward the $14,527 record.5,31