Chile hunts for copper buyers beyond China with US$100 billion mining plan
Chile’s foreign minister says the copper market is too concentrated, but refining more at home means competing with Chinese smelters
Chile wants to widen the group of countries buying its copper and attract about US$100 billion in mining investment over the next decade, its foreign minister said on Wednesday, in the most explicit move yet by the new government in Santiago to reduce its exposure to Chinese demand.
“The market is highly concentrated and we need to broaden the number of places that buy our copper,” Francisco Perez Mackenna said at a Bloomberg summit in Singapore, part of a tour through the Asia-Pacific.
He said China would remain a very important client because of its industrial capacity, and that global demand should continue to grow further as investment in data centres accelerates.
The concentration he described has deepened rather than eased over the past decade, with China now consuming roughly 58 per cent of the world’s copper and taking more than half of Chilean shipments.
The South American country produced 5.3 million tonnes in 2025, about a quarter of global output, making it the largest producer and the supplier no major buyer can replace at short notice.
Central bank figures through June show that the dependence is uneven and falls almost entirely on unprocessed ore.