Noticias

Copper’s on fire and these ASX red metal players are heating up

• Copper prices have run to all-time highs in 2026
• That has driven fresh investor excitement in junior developers and explorers, with valuations on the rise
• We chat to three copper companies making serious strides at the RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle

Copper prices have blown through all-time highs, touching US$14,500/t at one point in January before settling at around US$12,850/t.

Those are levels never seen until this year, and they’re brewing a mood of optimism across the small end of town.

Once the province of large caps, the winds of change have led investors to lower their eyes to some of the overlooked opportunities at the exploration and development end of the copper market.

And valuations are rising.

According to Chilean copper developer Hot Chili (ASX:HCH), the average valuation of independent junior copper developers has run from US2.3c/lb per measured and indicated pound in January 2023 to US7.9c/lb today.

Price to net asset value for copper producers and developers has run from 0.55x and 0.46x respectively a couple of years ago to 0.9x and 0.78x today.

With copper finally responding to rising demand from data centres, AI and electrification, as well as supply outages at major mines like Grasberg, Cobre Panama and Codelco’s Chilean operations, juniors are finally seeing some of the long-term enthusiasm for the metal reflected in their share prices.

And the reasons are obvious. Investors are searching far and wide for projects needed to step into the breach and fill an imposing shortage that could run past 10Mt per year in a couple decades.

Meanwhile, BHP signalled the handing of the baton from iron ore to copper by revealing in its half-year financial results that copper for the first time in years is its leading commodity – raking in 51% of first half earnings.

“We’ve been waiting for it for a long time,” Hot Chili (ASX:HCH) managing director Christian Easterday said on the sidelines of the RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle on Tuesday.

“So it’s fantastic to see the start of this next commodity cycle where copper is really one of the key drivers in the metal space along with obviously gold and silver and the precious metals.

“What we really like is the fundamentals behind copper and where we’re going with the price. It’s an exciting time to be a large scale copper developer that’s going to play in the early part of new supply.”

Hot to go

Hot Chili owns the Costa Fuego project in a low-lying section of Chile’s Andean copper belt, where it first made the Productora discovery in 2010.

That was followed by Cortadera in 2020 and La Verde last year.

A recent study suggested the project, a large scale porphyry, could deliver 95,000t of copper and 48,000oz of gold annually for its first 14 years.

Drill results from La Verde suggest it could be a shallow, higher grade starter pit, front-loading returns for a project that could produce a sizeable volume of the red metal for decades.

While they don’t dazzle the way high grade VMS deposits might for investors chasing a quick turnaround, those porphyry-hosted discoveries are the keys to filling copper’s long-term supply shortage, a reminder that rewards come to patient investors in this market.

“It’s that really age-old story of the tortoise and the hare. When you’re investing in 20-year timeframe projects to get to production, you need to start those projects a lot earlier than the timing for a copper cycle,” Easterday said.

“Productora was our first discovery after listing in 2010 and then we supersized the project to a billion tonnes in 2020 with Cortadera’s addition and now the addition of that third major discovery – La Verde – looks likely to take the project towards one and a half billion tonnes this year.

“So holding a five million tonne contained copper resource and five million ounce gold and one of the top five copper projects by scale that’s not controlled by a major at this time is pretty exciting for us.”

The other factor at play is the downstream, where smelters are desperate for a material short at the mine gate. At spot rates smelters now have to pay miners to process their concentrate, subverting long-term norms.

Hot Chili’s 7.5% shareholder Glencore will get 60% of its offtake over the first eight years of Costa Fuego’s life, but the other 40% is open, leaving the firm well placed to seek funding options with smelters or traders chasing the rest of its concentrate in a tight market.

Chasing porphyry discoveries

While small scale copper mines (often volcanogenic massive sulphide systems) deliver a sugar hit, the best assets long-term tend to be large, low-grade porphyries.

More widespread in Latin America, explorers are seeking opportunities to discover these in Australia as well.

They’re not unknown to the Australian market – Evolution Mining’s (ASX:EVN) Northparkes and Newmont Corporation’s (ASX:NEM) Cadia, the second largest copper mine in Australia and, depending on the year, largest gold mine, are cases in point.

“Around about 80-90% of the world’s global supply comes from porphyry copper, so these things create the opportunity when you get it right,” Cannindah Resources (ASX:CAE) managing director Cameron Switzer said.

Cannindah already has 14.5Mt at 1.1% copper equivalent at its Mt Cannindah project near Bundaberg in Queensland, once looked over by Codelco as it looked to invest outside its homeland.

But more exciting still are drill results which suggest it could be in the early stages of discovering a more substantial pencil porphyry, mirroring the discovery process of the Cadia mine.

A hit of 28m at 1.15% CuEq in January, which ended in mineralisation, was interpreted as the upper or outer halo of a high-grade gold-copper pencil porphyry system.

Switzer says it will take time to prove up that theory, but often the reward for sticking around can be impressive.

“If you go through the discovery histories of many of the projects, they take time typically,” Switzer said.

“I’ll just use the example of Cadia for example, hole 494 and 498 were the key holes in the Cadia discovery for the delineation of the high grades.

“So these things take time, it’s the same for us at Cannindah, there’s been lots of holes in there and each hole provides another sneak peek at more information.

“We’ll use that information now and have the opportunity to take it forward to further discoveries and hopefully drill the money shot.”

Copper fever spreads

While not known as a copper hotspot, interest is emerging in discoveries in WA’s Yilgarn.

Previously a pureplay gold explorer, Solstice Minerals (ASX:SLS) has seen its shares nearly triple in 2026 after hitting 61m at 1.55% copper at its Nanadie Well project in the Mid West, pried from Nifty copper mine owner Cyprium Metals (ASX:CYM) around 12 months ago.

Record prices and the discovery, which could extend a 40.4Mt resource containing 160,000t of copper and 130,000oz of gold, have dovetailed at the right time for MD Nick Castleden and his team, previously behind the sale of Apollo Consolidated and its Rebecca gold project to Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS).

“(The copper price) is fantastic in terms of sentiment and the ability for investors to look somewhere else apart from just gold and it’s definitely a part of the industry that’s short of new discoveries,” Castleden said.

“So whenever someone steps out and finds something that looks a little different, a little new, then it’s obviously capturing investor sentiment which is refreshing.

“We’ve got a genuine point of difference that we’re in WA on a flat bit of sandy bush and close to infrastructure and it’s not in an exotic place or in the jungle or on top of a mountain range.

“So it looks like it’s got some of the potential development steps cleared ahead of it, which is a really good place to start.”