ANGLO American CEO Duncan Wanblad refreshed mining industry concerns with the dearth of new copper resources required to feed growing demand for electric vehicles which typically require four times the copper used in standard gasoline vehicles.
Bloomberg News cited Wanblad as saying: “I genuinely don’t see where all of this copper is going to come from at this point in time”.
“There are lots of copper resources in the world, and I think those resources could be brought to book, but the length of time it takes is completely under-appreciated by the market,” said Wanblad. “I don’t know when the world is going to wake up to it, but I suspect it will be sooner rather than later.”
Commenting on Anglo’s own business growth ambitions, Wanblad said: “We’ve got a good eye on where we might find growth. If we find something that’s on our sheet already, that’s at the right price, that we can afford to do it at that point in time, I don’t think we’d be scared to do it.”
Anglo American recently touched down in Zambia after a more than 20 year absence where it once mined the country’s famous copperbelt. Wanblad commented that there are “very good rocks in central Africa. To the extent that there’s anything out there that is available, you can be pretty certain we would be looking at it.”
