Copper's Second Act: How Processed Tailings Can Aid in Rising Demand

Copper’s projected demand and deficit

A study from S&P Global shows that overall copper demand will jump about 50 percent by 2040, rising to 42 million metric tons and potentially creating a 10 million metric ton supply deficit. Much of this is attributed to “the accelerating pace of electrification,” coupled with the emerging AI and defense sectors.

Demand from data centers alone is expected to reach up to 2.5 million metric tons by 2040, with copper employed for its signal transmission, power transfer and thermal control capacities.

Mining remains the primary source of copper and is currently providing the short-term supply. The Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration notes that current mines are running out of ore or nearing exhaustion. New supply will also not meet the 2040 deadline, as the average time to bring a copper mine from discovery to production is 17.9 years.

S&P estimates that aggressive recycling could provide about a third of total copper needs by 2040, and the International Energy Agency said that it reduces new mine development needs by 40 percent by 2050. While these statistics seem promising, they point to the fact that adding recycling alone will not close the gap.

Tailings as supplemental sources

In 2021, Bloomberg reported that roughly 43 million metric tons of copper are sitting idle in waste dumps across mines worldwide. What makes tailings attractive, aside from global quantity, is that they no longer require time for exploration, or mining and crushing ore. The material is already sitting on the surface; what’s left is proper processing and management to unlock its value.

Tailings were deemed uneconomical in the past as the technology needed to process them was still inefficient. Demand at the time also did not call for a secondary source, and it only made sense for miners to exhaust resources to produce the highest grade possible and not extend efforts to re-crush or re-process waste.

In the DRC, state-owned Gécamines generated large volumes of copper tailings from industrial mining that began in the 1950s. Today, those tailings remain a defining feature of the Central African Copperbelt and include the Kolwezi tailings, which have led to ERG Africa’s Metalkol roan tailings reclamation project.

ERG states that Metalkol uses dredging and hydro-sluicing technology to recover tailings, which then uses high-pressure water to mobilize material. This offers a look at how modern technology creates advanced extraction and sustainable and cost-effective solutions, allowing miners to revisit tailings from the past.

Another example is Minera Valle Central (MVC) in Chile, which reprocesses materials into valuable commodities. Since 1992, MVC has partnered with state-owned Codelco to recover copper and molybdenum from both new and old tailings of El Teniente, the world’s largest underground copper mine. Powered by renewable energy, the process extracts minerals through water, which are crushed and separated from waste to make valuable portions float. The industry underlines that eco-friendly methods such as this also protect ecosystems, agriculture and community health.

CoTec Holdings’ partnered and staged approach

Canadian company CoTec Holdings has built its copper strategy around the presence of tailings in historical mining jurisdictions like the DRC. The US Geological Survey records the DRC’s 2025 mine production at 3.2 million metric tons, making it the world’s second largest producer behind Chile. A concentration of this production comes from the Central African Copperbelt, one of the richest copper and cobalt provinces in the world.

CoTec finalized a joint venture agreement with Copper Intelligence in September 2026, under which it is building a framework for pursuing tailings opportunities across the DRC's historical copper districts. The joint venture will combine CoTec's technology with Copper Intelligence's on-the-ground resource execution experience following a staged approach, testing technologies on each project to control capital and ensure maximum results.

Investor takeaway

Copper demand will continue to grow, and mining and recycling supply is running out of ways to catch up. Modern technology is shifting the gaze toward tailings from historical jurisdictions, which can produce a secondary, additional source with less time and resources.

With its newly formed joint venture, planned acquisitions and staged approach, CoTec Holdings is tapping into this opportunity. The company offers a peek into how technology and proper execution could support copper supply with waste, building from the ground up.

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