Copper supply lags demand as permitting delays, lower grades, policy risks bite

From fastmarkets.com

The concern comes as tightness is already visible at the upstream end of the copper supply chain. Spot copper concentrate availability has remained limited, pushing treatment and refining charges, or TC/RCs — the fees paid to smelters for processing mined concentrate into refined copper — deeper into negative territory. The decline has squeezed smelters’ traditional processing income, though the recent elevated sulfuric acid and other by-product revenues have so far helped keep smelter margins afloat and allowed plants to continue taking concentrate. Fastmarkets calculated the weekly copper concentrates TC ... (full story)