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China has built a commanding grip on global copper processing that could take the West decades and billions of dollars to challenge, veteran metallurgist Phillip Mackey has warned.
China now smelts about 60% of the world’s copper and refines a similar share after a 25-year expansion that has left Western miners shipping concentrate to the very country their governments are trying to rely on less.
Mackey, a copper smelting specialist with more than five decades in the industry and a past president of the Metallurgy and Materials Society of the CIM, said China produces about 12 million to 13 million tonnes of refined copper annually, compared with roughly 26 million tonnes worldwide, using about 45 smelters, several among the largest ever built. Chile, the world’s largest copper producer, now operates four after closing capacity.
“They’re the Saudi Arabia of copper smelting, if you like,” Mackey said on The Northern Miner Podcast. “They control the market.”
China mines only about 8% of global copper but processes well over half of it, importing concentrate from Chile, Peru and other producers to feed a smelting industry that now dictates processing economics across the sector. The imbalance underscores how Western governments remain dependent on Chinese refining even as they push to secure domestic critical mineral supply chains.
Decades-long build
Mackey said China’s dominance was built steadily beginning around 2000 by combining proven smelting technology with state-backed financing and massive industrial scale rather than technological breakthroughs. During the same period, the US reduced its copper smelting fleet from about a dozen facilities to just two as environmental permitting, soaring capital costs and decade-long construction timelines discouraged investment.
The result has been a collapse in treatment and refining charges as Chinese smelting capacity outpaced concentrate supply. Those fees, which miners pay smelters to process concentrate, have fallen to near zero and at times below zero, leaving Chinese overcapacity—not Western competition—to determine pricing. Mackey said the economics are unlikely to remain sustainable indefinitely, but they continue to reinforce China’s market power.
Slow rebuild
Mackey said rebuilding Western smelting capacity is achievable but would require long-term political commitment and substantial financial support.
“We’re mining the copper and then shipping it to China to be smelted and refined and then bringing it back,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense in the long term.”
A modern copper smelter costs several billion dollars and typically requires close to a decade to permit, build and commission. While governments have introduced critical minerals initiatives and supply-chain policies, Mackey said they have yet to match those ambitions with the funding and permitting reforms needed to support large-scale domestic smelting projects.
He compared the situation with rare earths, arguing that although copper remains abundant and widely traded, the strategic vulnerability is similar because Western countries continue exporting raw materials while importing higher-value refined products. He identified copper recycling as one area where North America and Europe retain an advantage because scrap can be processed at smaller scale and lower cost than building new smelters, although recycling alone cannot eliminate the processing gap.
Demand for copper continues to rise as electrification, renewable energy and data centres expand, making new refining capacity increasingly important. Mackey said the technology and concentrate supply already exist, but governments and industry must decide whether they are prepared to invest the time and capital needed to compete with China’s established dominance.
“It’s going to take, I think, an effort by governments and industry to move it along,” Mackey said. “There’s a lot of interest, but interest and doing are two different things.”
