Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer
Major Japanese trading house Mitsubishi Corp. announced Wednesday that it will officially begin developing a copper mine in Arizona, in partnership with a major Canadian resource company.
Mitsubishi's cumulative investment in the project is expected to total 1.02 billion dollars. Production is planned to begin in the second half of 2029. The project is aimed at ensuring a stable supply of copper, for which increasing demand is anticipated against the backdrop of rising electricity consumption.
Mitsubishi will hold a 30% stake in the Copper World project, while Canada's Hudbay Minerals Inc. will hold 70%. Annual production is projected to be about 100,000 metric tons, with Mitsubishi's share of production expected to be about 30,000 tons, in proportion to its equity stake.
In 2025, Mitsubishi announced that it would invest about 600 million dollars to acquire a 30% stake in the project. Since then, the company has been conducting studies toward finalizing the project and expects to make an additional investment of about 423 million dollars as initial development funding.
Copper offers excellent electrical and thermal conductivity and is used in power transmission cables and other applications. As global electricity demand rises, driven in part by the expansion of data centers resulting from the widespread adoption of AI, demand for copper is also expected to grow over the medium to long term. The International Energy Agency estimates that demand in 2030 will reach approximately 31 million tons, a 17% increase compared to 2024.
On the other hand, an increasing number of mines have been running out of high-grade copper in recent years, and rising development costs are making it more difficult to develop new mines. There is a view that supply will not keep pace with demand in the medium to long term, and trading prices have been trending upward.
Mitsubishi aims to increase its annual attributable copper production to more than 400,000 tons from fiscal 2030 onward. The company is currently involved in three operating copper mine projects in Chile and two in Peru, with its attributable copper production totaling 330,000 tons in 2025, which is the highest among Japanese companies. The company plans to continue increasing its attributable production, with projects including the Marimaca copper mine, currently under development in northern Chile and set to begin production around 2030.
Other Japanese companies are also stepping up their efforts. Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. plans to reach an attributable production volume of 300,000 tons by fiscal 2030, while Marubeni Corp. aims to increase its attributable production capacity from about 150,000 tons in 2020 to about 200,000 tons by 2028.
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This article is from The Yomiuri Shimbun. Neither Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, Barron's nor The Wall Street Journal were involved in the creation of this content.
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