The warnings keep getting louder: the world is on the verge of a critical copper shortage. Humans are more reliant than ever on a metal that has been used for 10,000 years; new deposits are drying up, and breakthrough technologies that have transformed other commodities have not materialised for copper.
A US startup claims to have solved a puzzle that has frustrated the mining industry for decades, which could be a game changer for global supply. If successful, Jetti Resources’ discovery could release millions of tonnes of new copper to feed power grids, construction sites, and car fleets all over the world, narrowing and possibly closing the deficit.
Jetti Resources technology
Jetti’s technology is focused on a common type of ore that traps copper behind a thin film, making it too expensive and difficult to extract. As a result, vast amounts of metal have been left stranded over the years in surface mine waste piles as well as untapped deposits. Jetti has created a specialised catalyst to disrupt the layer, allowing rock-eating microbes to work on releasing the trapped copper.
The technology must still be tested on a large scale. The riches at stake, however, are attracting some of the industry’s most powerful players.
According to people familiar with the matter, BHP Group, the world’s largest mining company, is already an investor and has spent months negotiating for a trial plant at its crown jewel copper mine, Escondida in Chile. This year, US miner Freeport-McMoRan Inc. began using Jetti’s technology at an Arizona mine, while rival Rio Tinto Group plans to implement a competing but similar process.
Responding to increasingly urgent problem
The miners are reacting to an increasingly urgent problem. Copper is used in everything from phones and computers to water pipes and cables in today’s world. While the global drive to decarbonize is based on eliminating dirty natural resources like oil and coal, an electrified future will require more copper than ever before.
Despite its importance, the world faces an increasing threat of scarcity in the coming decades. The best mines are getting old, and the few new discoveries are either in difficult-to-operate areas or face years of opposition to development.
Commodity market history shows that looming deficits tend to spur new discoveries and technologies. The shale boom in the United States in the 2010s turned the oil market, while breakthroughs in nickel processing upended supply forecasts.
Metal on surface in waste dumps
However, due to the long history of copper mining, massive amounts of metal are now sitting on the surface in waste dumps. The reason is an old mining principle: ore is extracted from the earth, the easiest metal is extracted, and anything too difficult or expensive to process is discarded as waste.
Over the last decade alone, an estimated 43 million tonnes of copper have been mined but never processed, amounting to more than $2 trillion at current prices, creating enormous opportunities for anyone who can successfully recover those riches.
It’s not a new concept to reprocess mine waste when technology improves or prices rise. But that just hasn’t been feasible for certain types of ore. And the breakthrough has opportunities far beyond waste dumps – there are millions more tons still underground that haven’t been viable to mine.
Much depends on the willingness of mining companies to install Jetti’s plants. However, if the technology is fully adopted by the industry, the company estimates that up to 8 million tonnes of additional copper could be produced each year by the 2040s – more than one-third of total global mine production last year. when technology advances or prices rise However, for certain types of ore, this has simply not been feasible.
Problem that Jetti is seeking to solve
Copper-bearing rock is classified into two types. Sulfide ores, the most common type, are typically crushed, concentrated, and then refined into pure copper in a fire-refining process. However, that method is not suitable for oxidic ores, and the industry’s last major innovation occurred in the mid-1980s, when it adapted an electro-chemical process to extract copper from oxide ores, resulting in a significant increase in supply.
Jetti now intends to use its technology to recover copper from a common type of sulphide ore that couldn’t be processed economically via either route — the copper content is too low to justify the cost of refining, and the hard, non-reactive coating prevented the copper from being extracted in the lower-cost electro-chemical or “leaching” process.
Jetti worked with the University of British Columbia to develop a chemical catalyst that breaks through the layer, so that the copper can be released using leaching without the need for high temperatures.
While Jetti’s process is the most advanced, Rio Tinto says it’s also cracked the challenge in lab trials. Rio has been offering its Nuton technology as a sweetener to junior mining companies that it invests in: if the smaller firms successfully develop their mining projects, then Rio will deploy the Nuton process to boost profitability. It’s signed three such deals already this year.
Rio expects Nuton to have produced approximately 500,000 tonnes of copper by the end of this decade, with the goal of one day producing the annual equivalent of one of the world’s top-five copper mines.
Other major miners, such as Freeport, Codelco, and Antofagasta Plc, have all been working on in-house solutions at their own mines, though little information on the success of these projects has been disclosed thus far.
And there are limits to how much can be accomplished. The focus is on North and South America, and whether the technology can be deployed across the major mines will determine progress.
