The challenge facing the world's major copper miners is how to tread the fine line between keeping capital expenditure in check while bringing new capacity online to take advantage of future higher prices.
With memories of the 2008-09 global financial crisis fresh in the minds of company executives and management boards, the focus over the past several years has been on cutting costs, selling non-core assets and shutting down unprofitable production capacity. It has had the desired effect: miners are in much better shape than they were before the crisis sparked a series of harsh lessons, and the desire to keep their past approach of growth for growth's sake in check remains. But with this shift has come another: an extremely thin pipeline of projects, particularly greenfields, and a copper market that is moving towards deficit at a steady pace. The major brownfields that will come...