Chinese copper giant Jiangxi Copper on Tuesday released an announcement, saying that the acquisition offer made by its wholly owned subsidiary for UK-listed SolGold had officially been approved following court proceedings and a ruling in the UK, and is expected to take effect on March 4 (London time).
This was a months-long tug-of-war.
Jiangxi Copper is offering 28 pence per share in cash to acquire all of SolGold’s issued and to-be-issued share capital, valuing the deal at about £867 million.
To secure the deal, Jiangxi Copper made three bids in total. In November 2025, two consecutive offers of 26 pence per share were both rejected. It wasn’t until December—when it raised the price to 28 pence and obtained irrevocable undertakings from key shareholders—that it finally managed to bite through this tough bone.
So what exactly is the target that made Jiangxi Copper so determined—so much so that it was willing to raise the price three times?
SolGold’s core asset is its 100% stake in the Cascabel copper-gold project in Ecuador.
The industry regards this deposit as one of the world’s most promising undeveloped copper mines. Proven copper resources exceed 20 million tonnes, with gold resources of more than 10 million ounces, and an ore grade as high as 0.7%.
For context, the average grade of copper mines worldwide is only 0.5%.
A giant mine with higher grades and reserves exceeding 20 million tonnes is a coveted anchor asset for any industrial powerhouse facing a growing resource shortfall.
If you had seen news like this a decade ago, most people might have read it as routine maneuvering in traditional industry.
Copper, after all, is just the raw material for wires and cables, air-conditioner piping—tightly tied to the infrastructure and real-estate cycle.
But viewed today, Jiangxi Copper’s RMB 8.2 billion all-in bet follows a completely different logic.
Copper’s strategic position is quietly shifting—from a “vitamin” of traditional industry to the oil of future technology.
This shift has been vividly reflected in industry developments over the past two years.
Nvidia’s GB200 superchip uses a high-speed copper-cable interconnect solution. A single rack uses more than 5,000 copper cables, with a total length exceeding 2 miles, cutting costs by a factor of six versus optical modules.
Each megawatt of an AI data center requires about 65.8 tonnes of copper. Global data-center copper usage was about 467,000 tonnes in 2023 and was expected to rise to 616,000 tonnes in 2025.
For short-distance transmission, copper cabling costs only one-fifth as much as fiber optics while reducing power consumption by more than 50%, making it the preferred option for short-reach links in AI clusters.
Even more imagination lies in humanoid robots.
Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot uses as much as 60 kilograms of copper per unit—far more than a new energy vehicle.
A detailed teardown shows that the servo system uses 6.6–13.6 kilograms of copper, the motor system 2.2–3.5 kilograms, and the battery and control system 1.0–1.8 kilograms—each a major copper consumer.
By 2035, if humanoid-robot output reaches 10 million units, annual copper consumption would hit 150,000 tons.
Robots also require high-strength, high-conductivity copper alloys with added elements such as silver and magnesium; this materials segment is growing at an annual rate of 20%.
Copper is no longer the quiet supporting actor lying inside cables to carry current; it is becoming a core material for the most cutting-edge arenas—AI computing power, embodied intelligence, and the energy transition.
When Nvidia’s superchips are linked by copper cables, and Tesla’s robot joints are packed with copper alloys, the bond between copper and technology has already completed a deep fusion—from the physical to the chemical.
With that context in mind, China’s mining companies’ overseas buying spree in recent years takes on an entirely new meaning.
This is no longer simple profit-seeking—it is a strategic land-grab for resources centered on future technological influence.
Tang Juxing, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering who has long studied mineral exploration for strategic resources such as copper, underscored its strategic value in an interview with Science and Technology Daily.
He said that new-resource minerals such as copper are the “soft gold” of our era—irreplaceable and indispensable in areas including new energy vehicles, semiconductor chips, and defense technology.
Map out the timeline and you’ll see Chinese companies are making moves more and more frequently.
In 2014, China Minmetals acquired Peru’s Las Bambas copper mine for US$7.005 billion, setting the largest overseas M&A record in the history of China’s metals mining industry; to this day, it remains one of the largest producing copper mines abroad.
In 2016, during a downturn in copper prices, CMOC moved against the cycle and took the DRC’s TFM copper-cobalt mine for more than US$3.7 billion. Its copper reserves reached 30.63 million tons—equivalent to 75.4% of China’s proven reserves at the time.
From 2019 to 2023, Tongling Nonferrous spent RMB 6.67 billion to acquire a 70% stake in Ecuador’s Mirador copper mine; after Phase II comes on stream, annual copper output is expected to exceed 200,000 tons.
In 2023, MMG acquired Botswana’s Khoemacau copper mine for US$1.875 billion.
In 2024, Sinomine Resource Group acquired Zambia’s Kitumba copper mine for US$58.5 million.
Moving into 2025, Zijin Mining invested more than RMB 45 billion in the joint acquisition of seven gold mines; CMOC spent over RMB 10 billion to acquire multiple mining assets in Ecuador and Brazil; and Jiangxi Copper’s £867 million deal was simply the latest link in this long chain of acquisitions.
Put the deals above together, and a resource puzzle begins to come into focus.
Peru and Ecuador in South America; the DRC, Zambia, and Botswana in Africa—these regions with the world’s richest concentrations of copper resources have all been within the strategic sights of Chinese companies.
The acquirers have also evolved from an early landscape dominated by central SOEs into a three-way balance among central SOEs, local SOEs, and private enterprises. Names like Minmetals, Chinalco, Zijin Mining, and CMOC have firmly taken center stage in the global mining arena.
Behind the wave of large-scale overseas M&A lies a sharp contradiction between domestic resource supply and demand.
China accounts for more than 50% of global copper consumption, yet holds only 3% of global reserves; for a long time, its external dependence has remained above 80%.
In 2024, the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee emphasized improving systems to enhance the resilience and security of industrial and supply chains, and called for better overall coordination and linkages across strategic mineral exploration, production, supply, stockpiling, and sales.
Xiong Zili, Director-General of the Geological Exploration Management Department at the Ministry of Natural Resources, put it plainly: with mines in hand, you don’t panic.
A structural shortfall might once have been merely a cost issue. But today, as copper becomes a core material for AI and new energy, it has turned into a security issue.
The United States has already designated copper as a critical mineral; the EU, meanwhile, has introduced the Critical Raw Materials Act, requiring a 40% copper self-sufficiency rate by 2030.
Through resource deployment along the Belt and Road, China is building a diversified, self-directed supply system to respond to great-power competition over resources.
Domestic mineral exploration is being strengthened in parallel.
Under the new round of strategic action for breakthroughs in mineral exploration, nearly RMB 450 billion has been invested cumulatively since the start of the 14th Five-Year Plan period. In 2024, an exploration-rights transfer plan was issued to local governments for the first time, offering more than 1,400 strategic mineral exploration blocks—an almost decade-high.
Tibet is projected to have more than 100 million tonnes of copper resources, with the potential to become a world-class copper resource base.
Newly added reserves at sites such as the Duobaoshan Copper Mine in Heilongjiang and the Julong Copper Mine in Tibet are also considerable.
The stockpiling system is also being improved—expanding the scale of national strategic reserves, exploring commercial stockpiling mechanisms, and even considering bringing copper concentrate, which is heavily traded and easy to monetize, into the scope of reserves.
A recycled-copper strategy is advancing in tandem: establishing a strategic resource reserve mechanism for recycled copper, carrying out state purchases and stockpiling when international scrap-copper prices are low, and making targeted releases when supply is tight.
In early 2026, three major central mining SOEs—including China Mineral Resources Group, Aluminum Corporation of China, and China Minmetals—launched restructuring and integration, aiming to build a safer industrial and supply chain and form a key-minerals保障体系 that runs on a dual cycle of domestic plus overseas.
The signal released by the integration was unmistakable: competition for critical minerals has risen to the level of national strategy, and it will require the national team to carry the banner.
Of course, buying back the resources doesn’t mean everything is settled.
A review of past cases shows that overseas mine acquisitions are only the first step—the real test comes in what follows: operations.
China Minmetals’ Las Bambas copper mine has faced local community protests and road blockades since 2018, leading to multiple production stoppages; it wasn’t until 2024 that output recovered to its historical peak.
China Molybdenum’s TFM project also once ran into a dispute with the DRC government over royalties tied to its expansion. The other side at one point demanded US$7.5 billion, and the matter was ultimately settled for US$800 million.
All of these experiences serve as a reminder that policy swings in resource-rich countries, community relations, and ESG requirements are all variables that must be managed continuously.
Duan Shaofu, Deputy Secretary-General of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association and Director of its Heavy Metals Department, shared a set of figures.
There are about 558 operating copper mines worldwide. In 2025, total capacity was about 29.3 million tonnes, and global mined copper output (copper content) reached 22.91 million tonnes in 2024, up 2.3% year on year.
At the same time, most high-quality mines around the world have been in service for more than 50 years, and both resource endowments and mining difficulty have continued to worsen.
Average global copper ore grade fell from 1.3% in 2005 to 0.65% today. About 90% of global copper mines’ cost spending is roughly US$6,400 per tonne, up 42% from 10 years ago.
From the perspective of supply-side bottlenecks, overseas resource supply has become increasingly fragile.
New mines coming online are also constrained by a host of factors, including infrastructure, the policy environment, and geopolitics.
IEA projections show that global end-use copper consumption will grow by 2.5% in 2026, and by 2035 the global copper supply gap will reach 30%.
Scarcity has already shown up in prices: over the past three months, spot premiums for copper cathode hit record highs, indicating that competition for immediate supply has intensified to a fever pitch.
In 2025, China’s copper consumption was expected to reach 15.4 million tonnes, an increase of about 3%.
In new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, wind power, and AI, consumption that year was expected to reach 3.8 to 4.0 million tonnes.
That figure is still rising rapidly.
In response to the supply-and-demand challenges facing the copper industry, the tech community and state-owned enterprises are stepping up efforts on three fronts: technological breakthroughs, resource security, and recycling.
Xu Fushun, Vice President and Chief Engineer of China Copper Co., Ltd., described their approach.
To address complex ore types, the company developed clean separation technology for complex copper–molybdenum ores and interfacial regulation technology using small-molecule inhibitors. It also built 13 recovery systems for associated rare metals, enabling efficient, higher-value utilization of resources.
As one of China’s most important copper producers, China Copper launched an intelligent mine program. By combining 5G with IoT technologies, it raised mining efficiency by 20% and cut energy consumption by 15%.
In 2025, recycled copper output reached 800,000 tonnes, accounting for 25% of China’s total recycled copper, effectively easing pressure on primary copper supply.
Looking back at Jiangxi Copper’s RMB 8.2 billion acquisition, it was both a win in a high-stakes commercial contest and a well-placed move in a broader strategic game.
The Cascavel project is still undeveloped. From securing the resources to producing copper concentrate, there’s a long road ahead—spanning infrastructure build-out, financing, and construction cycles—with plenty of hurdles to clear along the way.
But one thing is certain: on some future day, when that mine in Ecuador finally roars to life and the copper concentrate it produces is shipped back across the ocean to China, it won’t simply be turned into wires and cables. It will also become the specially shaped copper tubing inside AI servers, the high-strength copper alloys in humanoid-robot joints, and the densely packed copper pillar bumps inside chips.
It’s still the same copper—but the era has changed.
The contest in technology and industry among major powers plays out not only in the precision instruments of laboratories, but also in the mineral veins deep within the earth’s crust.
Keeping that seemingly ordinary copper wire supplied without interruption may be the lifeline that keeps the pulse of the intelligent age beating.
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