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Copper's New Supercycle: Powering AI, Electrification & the Next Decade of Growth | August 20, 2026

Investor TV Aug 26, 2026

Summary

The copper supply gap needs roughly 20 new mines by 2035, yet each large project takes five-plus years to permit and build.

Junior miners trade near one-third of last-cycle highs while producers have doubled, a setup Greg Johnson compares to 2002-2003.

Retail investors overweight headline drill intercepts and miss the scale, follow-up drilling, jurisdiction, and management track record.

Lower-profile jurisdictions like Botswana, Colorado, and Argentina may trade at unjustified discounts to Ontario and Nevada, panelists argue.

This copper cycle is broader-based than 2000-2008, driven by electrification, AI data centers, and urbanization across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Key points on Barrick Mining

  • Greg Johnson argues Barrick has shrunk from roughly 350 exploration projects globally in past cycles to a 'handful of guys' that now monitor the juniors — effectively outsourcing discovery to the market.
  • He says today's Barrick is waiting for juniors (in the room or otherwise) to make the discoveries it will eventually acquire and carry to production, rather than generating them internally.

Key points on Newmont

  • Johnson says Newmont holds 9.2% of Metallic Minerals and has joined a technical committee on the La Plata copper-gold project in southwestern Colorado — an unusually high level of engagement from a major at this stage.
  • He frames Newmont's involvement as part of a stated strategy to add long-life, high-cash-flow copper assets alongside its gold portfolio, anchored by the Newcrest acquisition.

Michael Williams's takeaways

  • Top takeaway Williams — co-founder and executive chairman of Vortex Metals, and ex-Underworld Resources — calls Vortex's Mexico project the 'best undrilled project I've seen in my career,' with permitting as the only remaining hurdle (he has added two former US ambassadors, including one to Mexico, to the board).
  • He cites his Underworld precedent — $28M spent in 24 months, monetized to Kinross for $138M — as evidence that a legitimate greenfield discovery can deliver explosive, exponential returns, while stressing only roughly 1 in 2,000 prospects becomes a significant mine.
  • Williams summarizes the bull case in five words: 'Copper is the new oil,' anchored on electrification of everything plus AI/data-center and EV demand layered onto a structurally short supply side.
  • He warns that building a major copper deposit takes roughly five years under ideal conditions, so the industry effectively 'needed to start digging yesterday' to meet 2031 and 2035 copper demand forecasts.

Christopher Ecclestone's takeaways

  • Top takeaway Ecclestone frames the current copper cycle as 'different from the previous ones' — more generalized (African industrialization, India, Latin American infrastructure) and no longer dependent on a single China-driven catalyst, with a 'critical metals' drumbeat behind it.
  • He says the supply gap is real and 'the Jeremiahs have been proved right,' but pushes back on the 20-year discovery-to-production narrative — arguing that much of that timeline reflects management market-timing (waiting for higher prices or a major's cheque) rather than permitting.
  • He describes a structural shift from the 'age of dinosaurs' (giant Chilean/Atacama-style mines) to a new 'age of mammals/woolly mammoths' — smaller, mid-sized deposits with long lives but no Oyu Tolgoi on the horizon.
  • He argues that some advanced copper juniors 'want Rio Tinto to buy them' and are happy to sit on proven assets while blaming permitting, suggesting long lead times reflect valuation strategy more than regulation.
  • On underrated copper regions, Ecclestone highlights Argentina as 'the new Chile,' the US (Laramie Province in Arizona and other re-openable belts), and broadly Africa as the location with the most serious underexplored upside.

Elmer Stewart's takeaways

  • Top takeaway Stewart identifies Copper Fox's Van Dyke in-situ copper recovery (ISCR) project in Arizona — with an updated PEA underway — as the asset most likely to drive the earliest step-change in valuation, ahead of the Shaft Creek JV optionality with Teck.
  • He argues early-stage discoveries are systematically undervalued by retail investors, who fixate on headline drilling grades instead of scale, continuity and the viability of converting a discovery into production.
  • He cites Copper Fox's maiden drilling at Mineral Mountain — a 279-meter intercept at locally 1.48% copper within a porphyry footprint defined by a large chargeability anomaly — as proof of discovery where the higher-grade core is still untested.
  • He positions Copper Fox as a three-project story layered across stages: Mineral Mountain (discovery), Van Dyke (ISCR development, PEA), and Shaft Creek (25% Teck JV, fully carried).
  • He closes with a strong price call — 'I see nothing but blue skies and copper price for the coming years' — explicitly endorsing Williams's 'copper is the new oil' framing.