Europe’s biggest copper smelter Aurubis will charge European customers a premium of $315 per metric ton for refined copper next year, three market sources said on Tuesday, a record high for the German company.
The premium is paid on top of the London Metal Exchange price for copper, used in power and construction, and is up 38% from $228 a ton in 2025 and the previous two years.
Aurubis declined to comment.
The record high premium comes amid fears of a copper supply shortage next year that pushed LME copper prices to a 16-month high of $10,800 a ton on Monday. The metal has gained around 8% over the past month and was trading at $10,698.50 as of 1027 GMT on Tuesday.
Miner Freeport-McMoRan last month declared force majeure at its Grasberg mine in Indonesia, the world’s second-largest copper mine, after a deadly mudslide. There has also been disruption at the Kamoa-Kakula mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo and at Chile’s El Teniente mine this year.
The suspension of production at Grasberg, which has seen Freeport slash the sales forecast for its Indonesian unit for this year and next, prompted analysts to adjust their copper market balance forecasts.
With the loss of 273,000 tons of copper from Grasberg in September to December, copper will post its largest supply deficit since 2004, Societe Generale said in a note on September 29. Bank of America, meanwhile, more than doubled its estimated copper market deficit in 2026 to 350,000 tons.
(By Pratima Desai, Tom Daly and Michael Hogan; Editing by David Goodman and Kirsten Donovan)
