SA Accelerates Its Copper To World As Demand Booms
Continued growth in global demand for South Australia’s abundant copper resources helped drive the state’s mineral and energy exports to a record high last financial year. And emerging global trends suggest that this demand is set to accelerate even faster.
The Minister for Energy and Mining Tom Koutsantonis today welcomes delegates to the Copper to the World Conference, a pillar of South Australia’s Copper Strategy since the conference series began in 2017, with a mission to harness the state’s copper potential.
The event is timely, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics revealing that South Australia’s total copper exports increased 17.4%, to $4.36 billion in the 2024-25 financial year. As part of that total, the value of the state’s copper ores and concentrates was up nearly 30%, bringing in an additional $330.7 million in export value. Refined copper and copper products were up 12.2% or $316.1 million over the previous financial year.
The record comes as global demand for copper accelerates with trends towards renewable energy, data centres for artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. The needs of developing economies also add to demand for copper, being an integral component in the construction of new infrastructure.
This phenomenon is also reflected over the longer term: in the ten years to 2024-25 copper’s export value has grown 134%. In the same period, the volume of copper production increased 26%.
South Australia is home to almost 70% of Australia’s economic copper reserves, with major mines like Olympic Dam, Carrapateena and Prominent Hill.
As put by Tom Koutsantonis
Copper is the number one mineral for our times, and South Australia has it in abundance.
Besides copper’s uses as a foundation in infrastructure-build and communication, it is central to the global carbon reduction agenda – in wind turbines, battery storage, EVs and charging stations, solar and communications. It’s also in demand to supply the world’s voracious and fast-growing appetite for data centres.
This puts South Australia in an envious position to help spearhead the global low carbon transition, an approach we are taking across our metal and critical mineral sector.
The Malinauskas Government declared copper a critical mineral in 2023. It is an essential component in almost every technology that modern economies are coming to rely on.
This record export figure demonstrates the clear demand for copper, and it’s a good sign of things to come.
Our vast reserves of copper, in combination with our early leadership in renewable energy and our relentless appetite for innovation, has our state ideally positioned to harness this pivotal point in the global transition.