Team Favorite: The Copper You Need Is Stuck In A 30-Mile Traffic Jam

and today the worldwide hunt for copper. Soon there might not be enough of it to feed our insatiable demand. The soundclip you heard at the top of the show. That was Bloomberg reporter Matthew Hill. He traveled to a huge copper mine in Zambia in Southern Africa, and he's here to tell the incredible story of what it takes to get copper out of the ground and into your computer or your car, the wiring in your house. I talked to Matt in just a bit, but first let's

talk about why copper matters so much. Because I'll admit I don't spend a whole lot of time worrying about the global copper supply, and I suspect you might not either. In fact, our producer Michael Falero went out onto the street in Washington, d C. To measure people's copper i Q. He asked them a simple question. A smartphone and air conditioner, an extension cord in a car? What material do they all share? Is plastic mercury motherboard? Why is um aluminium copper?

All right, it's not a trick question. Don't ever think it right. I absolutely would have failed that quiz, So I feel a bit better that most of those folks did too. If we're looking towards a future of clean energy, clean electricity, copper is a critical ingredient and we'll need more and more of it. So we asked a couple of people who do spend a lot of time worrying about the global copper supply to explain what a big deal it is. Von Lee is a metals in mining

reporter for Bloomberg based in New York. One thing is that if you're believing this electrification story, then copper really has the the feature for that, because copper has the most conductivity of all metals. Basically, not only your evs need copper, but power grids, energy storage, wing turbines, solar panels. They all need copper because copper is simply is kind of the best metal for electrification. So how much copper does the world need? Well, think about this. The average

car contains sixty pounds of copper. That's about twenty nine kilos. For an electric vehicle or e V, it can be a lot more. Here's James Atwood, a senior commodities reporter for Bloomberg based in Santiago, Chile, one of the world's

biggest copper producers. In an electric vehicle, it can be double or as much as four times that amount because of the reach out to batteries and it's electric gup, basically anything with word electric, and it means it's going to be a bit of copper, and you know whatever, The prices of copper go up, and then people look at things like aluminium and even plastic as alternatives of

substitutes for copper, but there's no easy substitutes for the copper. Globally, minds produce about twenty one million metric tons of copper each year, and in a little more than a decade the world's demand is expected to more than double. I sat down with a van and aims to hear more about what's at stake. Yes, I mean copies right now is sitting on about seven five hundred dollars a ton. It was more than ten thousand dollars early this year.

There are several analysts who are looking at more like fifteen thousand in the not too disti future. So doubling prices so that obviously that has a varying on water inflation, the potential to be a constraints on economic growth, but it also has a potential to be a constraint on net zero targets. How long does it take to make a new mind. Let's say today I have all the money in the world and I want to get a big, rich vein of copper, and I know where it is

and have the permits. How long will it take? It takes about eight to ten years, give or a take. You need to build a mind. That takes years, and for a mind to be fully operating, that's a multi year process. That's why we are saying people are worried that we don't have enough investment right now because down the line and next five years or so, we will be needing all the copper. And that's why if we don't have investment now, then we will be running out

of copper really soon. Do you envision a sort of a balance here where we need copper for renewable sources of energy and we need for all kinds of other things that we're going to need in the future, and yet it's dirty to produce. Is there a balance where the environmental costs of new mining and extensive extra mining from existing minds is outweighed by the benefit down the road, or do we eventually come to a point where we're

gonna need something else besides copper. Yes, I think the kind of like environmental and economic benefits outweighed the dirty part of copper mining, because I feel like if we are really serious about decombronization, we want to electrify the economy, there has to be some short term compromise to make

so that we can achieve long term decobronization. Yes, we usually associate money with kind of like dirty you see dust and blast explosion and things like that, But the benefit of having all the metals in a circular economy

is really beneficial to this clear energy future. So looking down the road, how concerned should people be that copper isn't going to be available, that products are gonna rise in price as a result of it, or be in short supply, and that the move towards non carbon based energy, cleaner energy is going to stall out if we cannot

solve this looming copper shortage. I guess what just has to be stuck with fossil fuel for a relatively longer period of time, And I guess if you want to buy an evy you'll have to pay a lot more then if we solve the copper shortage problem. In the short term, prices are coming off a bit lower than they were. Demand that look needs to and demand that looks bleak just as demand weakens or seems to be weakening, supplies coming on. That's what's causing this short term pullback.

But all that changes, according to the analysts that middle part of this decade, and that's when the tightness really starts becoming more visible and we'll start to bite. But when you talk to people kind of in the industry, are they worried about what's gonna happen? Yeah, they were just saying kind of like, we don't have the investment we need for the foreseeable future. So that's going to

be a huge problem. And I would say if Elon Musk is really serious about energy transition, he should invest in copper mining. Thank you so much, James Edward. I've only really appreciate you taking the time and educating us on this big problem. Thank you for having me. After the break, I talked with Bloomberg reporter Matthew Hill about what it's like to go deep underground in a Zambian

copper mine. So we've been talking about how important copper is to an energy future with fossil fuels for clean energy, and one of the big problems is that there is going to be a shortage of copper and coming years. There is a whole lot of copper in one place, though, and that is in Southern Africa and Zambia, in the area around the Democratic Republic of Congo. And so you'd think, great, they have big minds there. We can get the copper, but not so fast. Matthew Hill is joining me now.

He's Bloomberg recorder based in Umbumbella in eastern South Africa, and he has written a story called The Medals for Your ev are stuck in a thirty mile African traffic jam, Matt, thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks very much for having me on. So you went to this enormous mind in Zambia which produces a whole lot of copper. How much copper is there in this region, the Central African copper belt that extends from southern Democratic Republic of Congo into

northern Zambia northwestern Zambia. The area is bigger than the size of the country of Portugal, but over the past few decades very little of that copper has been exploited. Right now, together, Zambia and the Congo only account for about twelve of global copper production, but there is the potential to produce much much more than that. So there are many many tons of copper under the ground, and if they can get at it, it could go a

long way to alleviating a future Kapper shortage exactly. So, Um you mentioned Democratic Republic of Congo, which sits right on Zambia's border to the north, and between the two of them there is an enormous amount of copper and a lot of travel between them to get that copper out, and that is the subject of your story. You went to a very large copper mine in Zambia and show just how hard it is to get it out of the ground and get it then to where it needs

to be. Can you describe the mind? What did you see there? What was it like? The mind that we went to is in a small town called Muffu Lira in northern Zambia. Operations they're actually started in the nineteen thirties, so it's one of Africa's oldest copper minds. It's also one of Africa's deepest copper minds. We went down a new shoft just recently built that extends one thousand five

ms below the Earth's surface. All Right, I gotta ask you about this because I've never been down in the capermin and frankly, that sounds a little terrifying to me. What is it like to write down one of those shafts to mine that deep? Yeah, it's quite crazy. You get in what the mining folk call a cage um, which is just the industrial name for a giant elevator. It really goes quickly. We actually went right down to

the bottom of the mine. Even though it's in the middle of the African continent, it's actually below sea level. That's how deep it is. It's quite an intense environment down there. I mean the rocks just because of the sheer pressure you're going so deep below the Earth's surface. The temperature of the rocks is forty degrees celsius, which for those Americans is very hot. Yeah, I mean that's well well into the nineties. It's also one of the

Earth's wettest copper mines because it's in Central Africa. There's a lot of rain during the wet season, and that permeates, I mean it takes a long time, but that permeates down below the Earth's surface. And you've got these huge underground rivers flowing. At this particular mining shop. They have to pump up the equivalent of forty seven Olympic sized swimming pools worth of water every day, and that's just

to keep it from flooding the mine shafts exactly. So they've got these massive underground pump stations which are just constantly pumping up to the surface this water that's flowing down. I mean, it's like waterfalls and you're walking through pools of water, little underground streams. It really is one of the most extreme environments that I've ever been in. And then how is it cover actually removed. When the miners do,

are they blasting it? Are they using pixar? It must be a fairly industrial activity, very much so they blast or out of the or being the rocks that contained the copper they blasted out. In my hands, I've got some of the rocks that have been blasted out of the walls here. It's actually quite astounding how you can see the copper visibly showing up in the rocks. This is the richest copper that this mine has, and it's got just slightly more than two grams pop copper per

ton of rock. So to produce the copper, you've got to move a lot of rock, then loaded into dump trucks.

Those trucks haul it to the shot, which is the vertical tunnel that goes down to the bottom where it's loaded into cages and then hauled back up to the surface where it goes through a whole other process to pret use a product that is ninety nine point nine nine mine copper, so pretty pure, and that all happens on the site of the mine where it is mind and refined to that very pure copper, which is then essentially a product exactly. It's all within the vicinity of

the muffule Era mine. How much is that copper worth right now in the market if you look at the current copper price, which is about seven thousand, five hundred dollars per ton, And I must point out that especially over the past year, the price has been extremely volatile. It reached a new record above ten thousand dollars per ton earlier this year um and has since fallen quite a bit. But just at the current copper price, you are looking at about six hundred and seventy five million dollars.

You can see why it's worth all this effort you just described to get this out of the ground. Absolutely, do we know who's buying it where it ends up. The majority of that copper probably ends up in China, which accounts for about of global copper demand. And that's because China produces so much of the world's electronics and solar panels and other things where copper is used. Exactly, so you can imagine, I mean, when you're talking about removing tons of earth at the end, only the tiniest,

tiniest portion of that is actually copper. Uh, And so you are hauling an enormous amount out of the ground in order to get very very little, which I guess explains why copper is just so expensive in many ways. That's the easy pot. There are no shortage of buyers for all of that copper. By getting it into their hands is a harrowing journey. When we come back, Matt is going to describe the very long trip by truck

to get that copper to port. Now, so you went down into the mine and you watched how it is brought up from deep in the ground and refined into copper, and next is trying to get into the hands of the people who want to use it. Um, can you describe exactly what it takes to do that? Well, it must be one of the most difficult jobs in the world, if not one of the longest jobs in the world.

To complete. Watch should be a relatively simple task. From the Democratic Republic of Congo, the mind's just north of the Zambian border there, which are actually much bigger than the Zambian minds in terms of production. You are looking at about three thousand kilometers down to the port of Durban, just off South Africa's east coast, which has always been the most important port for copper exports out of the Central African copper belt for both Zambia as well as

the Democratic Republic of Congo. That three thousand kilometer journey this year, it's taken more than thirty days, and that trip is incredibly long. And Heroin, can you describe it? Because you and a long this route and you saw what it's like to transport copper. One of the most interesting things I've ever seen in my life is the Kasumber Lesser border between Zambia and the Congo. That in

essence is where the biggest problem is. Um You've got on the Zambian side a queue of trucks waiting to cross into the Democratic Republic of Congo about fifty kilometers long. So that's where the title of your story comes. That's about thirty two miles. So there's thirty two mile long queue of trucks all just waiting to get underwet. Yeah, and these drivers are there for days. I mean as as long as a week it takes to cross that border.

Why does it take so long across the border? The growth in production out of the copper mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been so large that the customs officials haven't been able to keep up, So it takes that long just to get your papers and make it all officials so that you can then just hit the road exactly. The border process is extremely slow and these drivers spend as long as a week waiting in these queues. So what are they doing? I mean they're

sitting in trucks. Where do they sleep? How do they eat? What is the scene like there? Everything's just centered around the cow and of their truck. That's their home. And bear in mind that there's this is rural rural Africa. In many stretches of of the queue, there's not even villages. So these these drivers are just sitting chatting to the other drivers. There's no toilets, there's no showers, there's no real formal shops or restaurants. This is rural Africa that

these guys are sitting in. End. I mean the temperatures there in the summertime get extremely hot. And in your story you talk about how a whole informal economy has grown up around serving these drivers needs at the Kasumber Lesser border itself. It's extremely interesting because you've you've got this hive of activity that sprung up around um just this cross border commerce between the Zambie and Congo, a lot of it being almost all of it being because

of the mining industry. So you've got guys walking around in modified, heavily modified bicycles. They don't even have seats. They just built to transport goods, water, cookies, or even charcoal that the truck drivers and other people used to cook their food. There's just this whole hive of informal economy that's trying to make money off the truck drivers who have not much choice of how to fill their bellies or where to get drinking water and that sort

of thing. You talked to a lot of the drivers while they were just sitting there waiting to get underway. What did they have to say about their lives. Well, they are very appreciative of how and the scriptive of how tough their jobs are. Most of them are very eager to speak to me because they have an incredibly difficult job and they want to tell people about that. One of the things that the drivers were most eager to speak about is just how dangerous it is for

them to cross into the Democratic Republic of Congo. They complained bitterly about police corruption there, basically police demanding that they pay bribes. It's number one corruption and because the police there, even if you haven't done nothing, they can even come to your truck and my brother, ah, I can see your light is not okay. He hasn't even checked the truck. So you must have something on the on the road. No money, ah, you can die. There's

also a problem of crime. When the drivers are sitting there with their trucks are sort of like sitting nuts for thieves. Yeah, exactly. Um And a few of the drives that I spoke to raise that issue, one of them said that he basically has to sleep with one eye open because especially this year, with the rocketing price of diesel UM, that's also made the diesel in their trucks a very lucrative target for thieves. You does sleep like absolutely pink because sometimes when you hear someone who

move around that outside, you wake up. And then if they're able to make it through and it reaches port, then what happens Earlier this year, the port of Durban in South Africa, which is the port that the mining companies rely on more than any other in the region to export their copper, that the port of Durbon was hit by floods not seen in decades. The floods not only killed more than four people, but they caused severe damage to the port. The damage that these floods caused

has only made matters worse. When I visited the port earlier this year, it was still recovering from the floods. They washed away roads and damaged warehouses. It's very difficult to explain how bad the damage was. So if these drivers are waiting as long as two weeks just to get out of Congo and into Zambia, and then they have to go on this very dangerous and long trek down to port, how long does it on average take to get a load of copper from the mind to

the port? From the companies that I spoke to this year, they considered about a month of fairly average time. Matt Is the world's demand increases for this copper, it seems like this is not a process that can go on and forever. They're going to have to do something about this to make it more efficient. Is there anything actually being done to ease the supply eyeline from the mind to the ports so that it is not this just like mad Max like story that you've described here, This

is the billion dollar question. So far, what companies have been doing to try solve the problem of congestion is to throw more trucks at it, which of course only makes more congestion. Ultimately, the most sustainable solution is to improve rail connectivity. That's what a lot of the mining companies have been saying. They need to be able to move more of the logistics onto rail. But building rail is expensive and it takes a long time. Is there

actually plans to do that now? I mean, the Congolese government a few months ago unveiled an investment plan of about fifty eight billion dollars to upgrade their countries infrastructure. A lot of that is required both road and rail. The Zambian government already has a railway line connecting the copper belt to the port of Darius Salem in Tanzania, but that's fallen into complete disrepair, so that's going to take a lot of investment to get the upper end

and running again. There's also a railway connectivity from the Zambian copper belt to the port of Durban, but once

again that's going to need a lot of investment. It's not that there will be one solution, but probably a number of different solutions which will require investment from both the governments involved as well as private companies to make sure that there is a sustainable way to get the copper out of this resource that the world desperately needs over the next couple of decades to the places that needed Matt Hill, thanks for coming on the show. Thank

you very much for having me up. Really enjoy talking about this. You can read more about Matthew Hill's journey to the Zambie and coppermine and see photos of his trip at Bloomberg dot com. That's also where you'll find the latest reporting from Yvon Lee and James Atwood. Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take, the daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Read today's story and subscribe to our daily newsletter at Bloomberg dot com slash Big Take, and we'd love to hear from you. Email us with questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Burgalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Our producers are Moe Barrow and Michael Falerro Hill de Garcia is our engineer. Original music by Leo Sidrin. I'm Westcosova. Have a great weekend.