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

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 I 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 toward 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 and 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 e vs need copper, but power grids, energy storage, wind 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, senior Commodities reporter for Bloomberg based in Antiago, Chile, one of the world's biggest carper producers. Being an electric vehicle, it can be doubled or as much as four times that amount because of the reach out of batteries. And it's electric gun basically anything with word electric, and it means there's going to

be a lot of copper. And you know, whatever, 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 Van and James to hear more about what's at stake. Yes, I mean coppers right now is sitting on about seven thousand, five hundred dollars a ton. It was more than ten thousand dollars earlier. This year. There are several analysts who are looking at more like fifteen thousand, and they're not too disid future, so doubling prices so that obviously that has a vary on water inflation, the potential to be constraints on growth, but it also has a potential to

be a constraint on 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 the 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 outweigh 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 decombronization. Yes, we usually associate mining with kind of like dirty you see dust and blast explosion and things like that, but the benefit of having all the medals 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 toward 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 fia 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 out look needs to 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 become being more visible. And we'll start the points. 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, you should invest in copper mining. Thank you so much, James

Edwin von Lee. 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 Zambie and copper mind. So we've been talking about how important copper is to an energy future with our 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. 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 reporter 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

copper shortage. Exactly. So, Um you mentioned Democratic Republic of Congo, which sits right in 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 mines. It's also one of Africa's deepest copper minds. We went down a new shoft just recently built, that

extends one thousand five meters below the Earth's surface. All right, you gotta ask you about this, because I've never been down in the coppermine, and frankly, that sounds a little terrifying to me. What it is it like to write down one of those shafts to a mind that deep. Yeah, it's quite crazy. You get in what the mining folk call the cage um, which is just an industrial name for a giant elevator. It ready 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 high. 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 shot.

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 the cover actually removed? What are the miners do? Are they blasting it? Are they using pixel 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 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 of 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 produce a product that is ninety nine point

nine nine nine copper, so pretty pure. And that all happens on the side of the mine where it is mine 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 plot. 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. Matt, 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 yeah, it's taken more than thirty days, and that trip is incredibly long. And heroin. Can you describe it?

Because you in 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 Kasumba 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 as

about thirty two miles. So there's thirty two mile long queue of trucks all just waiting to get underwetg 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? They're everything's just centered around the cabin 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 the 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 consumer 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 high 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. They're basically police demanding that they pay bribes. It's none on 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 and sort of like sitting ducks 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 awesome, made the diesel in their

trucks a very lucrative target for thieves. You do sleep like absolutely pink because sometimes when you hear someone who move around that outside work up and then if they're able to make it through and it reaches port, then what happens Earlier this year, the Port of Bourbon 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 Bourbon 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 forever.

They're going to have to do something about this to make it more efficient. Is anything actually being done to ease the supply line 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 other 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 country's infrastructure. A lot of that

is required for both road and rail. The Zambian government already has a railway line connecting the copper belt to the port of Darius Salam 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 is also a railway connectivity from the Zamian 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 were 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 Hell, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you very much

for having me. I've really enjoyed talking about this. You can read more about Matthew Hill's journey to the Zambie and Coppermann and see photos of his trip at Bloomberg dot com. That's also where you'll find the latest reporting from Yvan Lee and James Atwood. Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Tech, the daily podcast from bloom Berg and I Heart Radio. For more shows from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

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 West Casova. Have a great weekend.