LONDON, May 20 Reuters Copper surged to record highs on Monday as a recent rally triggered by short covering created momentum for speculators and funds to bet on higher prices of the metal.

Below are the main facts about the copper market, sourced from the International Copper Study Group ICSG, the International Copper Association ICA, and Reuters data.

INDUSTRIAL USES

Copper is used in the power and construction industries and is widely expected to benefit in future from the green energy transition via additional demand from the electric vehicle sector and new applications including data centers for artificial intelligence AI.

Equipment manufacturing is currently the largest enduse sector for copper, followed by construction and infrastructure.

Global apparent use of refined copper rose from 10 million metric tons in the late 1980s to 26.5 million tons in 2023 as Asia became the largest consumer with a 70 share of consumption. As of 2022, China was the largest consumer of refined copper with usage of 14.7 million tons.

PRODUCTION CHAIN BY TYPE AND BY REGION

Deposits of copper, one of the first metals used by humans, are widespread around the globe. Scrap accounts for significant amounts of global supply annually.

Copper39;s primary production chain starts from the mining of copperbearing ores, then moves to production of copper concentrates typically containing around 30 copper.

The smelting process transforms concentrate into a matte containing 5070 copper. The…