Financial Times
Copper prices will surge to a record high this year as a rebound in Chinese demand risks depleting already low stockpiles, the world’s largest private metals trader has forecast. The benchmark three-month copper contract is trading at $9,000 a tonne, having gained 30 per cent since falling sharply in the three months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when investors fretted that soaring energy prices would dent metals demand. Kostas Bintas, co-head of metals and minerals at Trafigura, the Singapore-based trading house, said that copper prices would probably surpass the $10,845 a tonne peak achieved in March 2022 and could even hit $12,000 a tonne.