Ivanhoe Electric will tackle US copper shortages with the new Arizona mine

In the US Copper problem. Simply put, the US uses a lot of it and there are not enough American mines to pull it out of the ground quickly enough. But Ivanhoe Electric has been working to become the first US-based company to open Stateside for more than a decade. And when I took a picture with the copper price high, the timing didn’t improve.

president Donald Trump They hope to issue an executive order in March to add copper to their key mineral list. On July 8th, the president announced a 50% tariff on copper imports starting on August 1st.

The US produces only about half of the copper it uses, ranking fifth behind Chile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Peru and China. Part of the reason is that it takes an average of 29 years for a copper mine to start production due to the long permit and approval process.

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However, Ivan Wherekrik’s Santa Cruz project, which is about 40 miles south of Phoenix in Casa Grande, Arizona, aims to go into operation by 2028 by just eight years after the project began.

“It’s like tomorrow on mining conditions. It’s incredibly fast and incredibly efficient,” said Taylor Melvin, president and CEO of the Tempe-based company. “One of our great benefits is that it is on private property here in Arizona, which gives us a much more streamlined permitting process. Construction and production.“

The company collects core samples across 6,000 acres of land and plans the best location for me. The mine is underground and there is enough copper to produce around 3 billion pounds of copper over the next 23 years. Once completed, “we will put us in the top five or six mines in the US,” says Melvin.

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Another advantage of the mine is how copper is extracted. There are only two copper smelters in the United States. This means that much of the mined copper is shipped overseas for processing. However, Ivanhoe Electric uses leaching to extract copper due to the properties of the ore found at the Santa Cruz Mine site.

“We produce pure copper gold on this site and are ready for consumption by US consumers,” Melvin said.

And Americans, and other parts of the world, are set up to consume more. According to International Energy Agency, Demand for copper was approximately 26 million tonnes in 2024. By 2050, that number is projected to reach around 40 million tonnes.

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But there is one major problem. By then many mines will be empty. That is, production is set to drop unless new mines are established.

“Copper is an absolute important metal. Copper is needed for every aspect of the economy. It is necessary to expand and improve the electrical grid. We need to support technological advances such as the data centers needed to support artificial intelligence and AI. And the defense industry absolutely needs copper,” Melvin said. “So it’s really hard to imagine more metals that are more important than copper.”

This has put Ivan Hoe Rekrik and other US copper companies in a strong position. Construction of the Santa Cruz project will be adopted 900 full-time workers, It will fall to about 600 after completion and during the mining stage. Many positions pay six people and the job is largely guaranteed for the next 25 years.

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And mining companies have a positive outlook in hopes of Trump’s support and officially moving copper to a key mineral list.

“In our 25 years in the natural resources of the copper mining industry, we have never seen a more supportive environment for domestic mining than we currently have,” Melvin said. “We are in the perfect location at the perfect timing for our projects. To be a US company that has products in the US on private land that can produce copper metals. Supply domestic demand It was ideal for Ivanhoe Electric back then, and is a great environment in the US for domestic mining today. ”