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Glencore CEO warns of growing global copper supply deficit despite new projects
Wednesday, December 24, 2025 at 12:00 AM
The CEO of Glencore highlighted a widening gap in global copper supply, noting that current and planned production projects are insufficient to meet projected demand deficits.
Context
Glencore CEO Gary Nagle recently warned that the global copper supply gap is widening despite the industry’s pipeline of new projects. This deficit is a critical bottleneck for the AI sector, where copper is indispensable for high-performance data centers and the electrical grid expansions required to support compute power. As the primary conductor for the digital revolution, the metal’s scarcity threatens to inflate infrastructure costs and delay large-scale technology deployments.
Industry projections suggest a structural shortfall of up to 10 million metric tons by 2035. Glencore highlights that even "probable" projects cannot bridge this gap, as the average timeline to bring a new mine online now exceeds 15 years. With global demand expected to double by 2050, the supply chain remains structurally fragile, placing significant long-term pressure on the physical foundations of the global AI and semiconductor build-out.
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