NEW YORK, May 23 (NNN-ANDINA) – Copper mine production in the Americas will average 4.7% YoY growth over the coming five years, driven by a pipeline of significant projects in copper-producing heavyweights Chile and Peru, Fitch Solutions has projected.
Within this framework, the Americas has a large group of countries where it expects “to see growing copper production over the coming years.”
In particular, Fitch Solutions believes Chile and Peru will have the most significant absolute growth over the forecast period as a multitude of projects come online.
“In Peru, there are multiple projects expected to come online in the next five years as well, including the expansion of Toromocho, owned by Chinalco, and Anglo American’s Quellaveco mine. The latter will have the capacity to produce 300kt per annum. Between both Chile and Peru, we see combined absolute copper mine production growing by 1.5mnt through 2023,” it stressed.
In this sense, “we estimate that copper mine production in the Americas will average 4.7% y-o-y growth over the coming five years, driven by a pipeline of significant projects in copper-producing heavyweights Chile and Peru.”
“In particular, we believe Chile and Peru will have the most significant absolute growth over our forecast period as a multitude of projects come online,” it added.
Fitch Solutions sees Ecuador, Panama, and Brazil —three countries less known for their copper production— to begin playing a more relevant role over the coming years, supporting regional production growth and diversifying some production risk away from Peru and Chile.
“The former two countries are newer entrants to the space with Ecuador becoming a hot spot for investment following favorable regulation and tax changes in recent years while Panama has one behemoth copper mine that came online in February 2019,” it said.
On a percentage growth basis, Fitch Solutions sees Ecuador, Panama and Brazil being growth out-performers, “while regional heavyweights Chile and Peru will dominate absolute production growth.”
“Due to the low base effects in Ecuador and Panama, annual average production growth will come in at 84% and 36% respectively over 2019-2023, and we estimate the combined production from these two countries to reach 540ktpa by 2023,” it stated.
Peru and Chile are expected to average 6% and 4% growth respectively, however, absolute production increases in both countries are going to be the major driver of growth within the Americas, Fitch concluded.
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