Peru's copper export slide started by Antamina, could be followed by Las Bambas

A roadblock protest at Metallic Minerals Corp.'s Las Bambas copper mine in Peru has held up exports of 130,000 tons of copper concentrate worth $530 million, Reuters reports. The firm has already had to declare force majeure on its deliveries as a result of the protest and may need to halt production at the plant. Infrastructure blockages are not an uncommon challenge for industrial supply chains, as flagged in Panjiva's research of Dec. 14, though in this instance alternative shipping routes are unlikely to be available.

Panjiva's data shows that Las Bambas was one of the three largest complexes exporting copper from Peru with a 14.7% share of exports in the 12 months to Nov. 30. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the ownership of the mine, 51.5% of exports from the facility went to China in the 12 months to Nov. 30 while South Korea represented a further 22.1%. There had previously been a rapid expansion in exports of 44.9% sequentially in the past three months and by 91.1% year over year, likely reflecting the complexities of restarting production after pandemic-related closures as well as soaring demand from Chinese manufacturers.

That meant Las Bambas outpaced its peers, with total Peruvian copper exports dropped by 5.5% sequentially and by 32.9% year over year. The offset came from an apparent absence of exports from the Compañía Minera Antamina SA facility owned jointly by BHP Group, Glencore PLC, Teck Resources Ltd. and Mitsubishi Corp. which slumped 95.6% lower sequentially. Glencore's stand-alone facilities meanwhile experienced an export improvement of 1.2% while Freeport-McMoRan Inc. did better with a 28.6% increase.

Christopher Rogers is a senior researcher at Panjiva, which is a business line of S&P Global Market Intelligence, a division of S&P Global Inc. This content does not constitute investment advice, and the views and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Links are current at the time of publication. S&P Global Market Intelligence is not responsible if those links are unavailable later.