How much copper the world still finds
World copper mine production reached 23 million tonnes in 2025, essentially flat from 2024, according to the United States Geological Survey, the federal agency that tracks mineral supply. Chile alone produced 5.3 million tonnes in 2025, more than the next 2 countries combined.
Congo refers to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Show the numbers
| Chile | 5,300 |
| Congo | 3,200 |
| Peru | 2,700 |
| China | 1,800 |
| United States | 1,000 |
Every scoop of rock holds less metal than it used to
Ore grade is the share of mined rock that is actually the metal being mined. A 2016 study published in the journal Resources examined 25 copper mines across Australia, Chile, Laos and the United States and found their combined average ore grade fell about 25% between 2003 and 2013, while the worldwide average grade sat at only about 0.62%, meaning less than 1 part in 100 of the rock mined was copper. Energy needed to process that rock grew 46% over the same 10 years, faster than the 30% growth in production, since lower grade rock takes more crushing to yield the same amount of metal.
One mine in the study, El Soldado in Chile, shows how steep that decline can get. Its ore graded 1.7% copper in 2003 and only 0.46% in 2012, a fall of about 73%, a MAOWCE calculation from those 2 figures. That decline belongs to 1 mine, not to Chile as a whole, since the study gives no national average.
The same pattern showed up again in 2025
A decade later, the United States Geological Survey reported that lower ore grades at multiple mines helped cut domestic copper mine production 5% in 2025, to 1.0 million tons from 1.05 million tons in 2024. The International Copper Study Group separately names declining ore grades as a serious constraint in the United States and Chile, the same 2 countries the 2016 study flagged. That 2025 figure describes United States mines only, not the whole world, but it shows the same pattern a decade later.
Sorting the rock before it is crushed
TOMRA, a manufacturer of sensor based ore sorting machines, says the technology exists because as ore grades decline, demand for the metals inside that ore keeps rising. Its machines scan rock on a conveyor before it reaches the mill and reject the pieces that hold too little metal to be worth processing. TOMRA sells this equipment into copper mines, but the detailed results it has published come from mines that do not produce copper, a gold mine in Alaska and 2 tungsten mines in Australia and Austria. Removing barren rock this way can cut energy use up to 50%, TOMRA reports.
These describe 3 different named parts of the system, general barren rock removal, a precision ejection system, and a detection system, not 3 measurements of the same thing, and do not add up to a total. TOMRA states its detection system can double sorting capacity in the same machine size. A doubled quantity equals a 100% increase, a MAOWCE calculation from that statement, shown here as the third bar.
Show the numbers
| Energy used | 50 |
| Air used | 70 |
| Sorting speed | 100 |
At the Mittersill mine in Austria, run by Wolfram Bergbau, the sorting system removes 25% to 40% of the raw rock as coarse waste before it reaches the mill. At the Kensington gold mine in Alaska, sorting recovered 4,216 ounces of gold from material once treated as waste in a single year, worth almost 20 million dollars at January 2026 prices.
In the latest publicly available technical report, 4,216 ounces of gold were recovered from the pebble sorting operation in one year.
Jordan Rutledge, area sales manager at TOMRA Mining. Source 5.
At the Mt Carbine tungsten mine in Australia, selling the rejected rock as construction aggregate brings in about 5 million Australian dollars a year.
Selling these green aggregates adds a significant portion to our business – about 5 million Australian Dollars a year – and that's all because of the TOMRA sorters.
Kevin MacNeill, chief executive of the Mt Carbine mine. Source 5.