Business | Schumpeter

Copper is the missing ingredient of the energy transition

Where on Earth will it be found?

At 76, RICHARD ADKERSON is an elder statesman of the copper industry. For two decades he has been CEO of Freeport-McMoRan, one of the world’s biggest copper producers, valued at $55bn. He has seen it all, from short-term booms and busts to the China-led supercycle, and from industry fragmentation to consolidation. Freeport itself has pioneered some of the trends. In 2007, when it paid $26bn for Phelps Dodge, an Arizona-based company dating back to the Wild West days of the 19th century, it was the biggest mining transaction ever. It was also a masterstroke. Not so the company’s ill-fated diversification into oil and gas less than half a decade later, which he says was not his idea. That caused a near-death experience and had to be swiftly unwound after both energy and metal prices crashed in 2016.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “The coming copper crunch”

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