Gianni Kovacevic explains why copper is the up and coming metal at Mines and Money Americas
SmallCapPower | September 30, 2016: With all the recent talk about the lithium boom and how important the metal is going to be with regards to its use in electric car batteries, it’s quite amazing that the masses haven’t been looking at another major component of the equation…copper, this according to author Gianni Kovacevic. When you talk about important metals in the market gold and now lithium seem to dominate the conversion, yet copper is often left out as the ugly duckling of metals, whose value trend is forever tied to that of oil. However, that is expected to change.
SmallCapPower recently had the privilege to sit down with renowned copper expert Gianni Kovacevic, Executive Chairman, CEO and Director of CopperBank Resources Corp. (CSE:CBK), at the Mines and Money Americas show this past week in Toronto, and he explained to us just how this is will go down.
He stated that although copper and oil are still correlated in price, you will see that relationship decouple. You may ask why that is? That’s because on average, for every one unit of oil or fossil fuel energy that you take offline and replace with renewable energy, you see a 4-6 times higher copper usage in renewable energy, he contends.
As Gianni said, “copper is the driver of efficiency in many applications.” No other element is more conductive and economically viable to use for everyday production. The U.S. is looking for a 40-46% energy efficiency target in motors by 2025, and copper is the only way that goal is going to be met.
For this reason the price of copper is only going to increase. Most people believe that China and its demand for copper dictates the price, however as Gianni pointed out moving forward it’s going to be global modern, clean energy that drives the demand and subsequently the price of the metal higher.
Take the electric car as an example. The average combustion engine driven car uses approximately 50lbs of copper. When you look at the copper usage in an electric car that number grows by 200-300% to over 150lbs. Compare that to only approximately 28lbs of lithium per car that is used in the battery, or less than 3% off the battery weight.
In addition, copper also has great antibacterial and antiviral properties. In tests it has been shown that copper kills 99.9% of bugs and viruses within two hours. It has even killed the superbugs that antibiotics and cleaners can’t. That opens up a lot of potential for hospitals to coat surfaces to help kill the ever growing number of hospital-born infections.
With the world moving forward, and clean energy on a steep incline, Gianni made a good point. He said, “Never invest on page 1, invest on page 16.” The price of copper is low and the forthcoming demand seems like an inevitable catalyst to push its price higher as people realize just how much is used in new modern energy-efficient technologies.
After everything was said and done, it seemed like what Gianni told us all made sense….. “Copper wins.”
