Search for a copper shortage and the warnings are loud. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says global primary copper supply could face a 25% deficit in 2035, and S&P Global puts a potential shortfall at about 10 million tonnes by 2040. Yet the International Copper Study Group (ICSG), whose government delegates and industry advisors meet in Lisbon to forecast the market, expects a refined surplus of about 104,000 tonnes in 2026 and about 368,000 tonnes in 2027. That looks like a contradiction. It is not: the warnings are about the mined supply the 2030s and 2040s could need, and the surplus is about refined metal in 2026 and 2027.

QMines (ASX:QML) is a copper-gold explorer and developer advancing the Mt Chalmers project in Queensland through a fully funded Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS), and it works on the side of the market where the long-run copper supply gap gets decided: new mines. This page shows why the surplus and the shortfall do not contradict each other, and why the long-term investment case for copper leans on the second one.

Is there a copper shortage right now?

Not in refined copper, on the forecast ICSG published on 14 October 2026. Refined copper is metal that has been smelted or leached and then refined into cathode, the form traded on the London Metal Exchange. ICSG measures that market as refined production minus apparent usage, and it expects a surplus of about 104,000 tonnes in 2026 and about 368,000 tonnes in 2027.

Those are thin margins. By our calculation from ICSG’s own table, the 2026 surplus is about 0.4% of forecast refined usage of 28.59 million tonnes, and the 2027 surplus is about 1.3% of 29.31 million tonnes. The only 2026 copper deficit ICSG has published was the 150,000 tonnes in its October 2025 forecast, and it has since reversed.

How it reversed is the part worth reading. By its April 2026 forecast, ICSG had the 2026 balance at a surplus of about 96,000 tonnes, and in October 2026 it moved to about 104,000 tonnes. ICSG put the April flip down to lower than previously anticipated copper usage and higher secondary refined production, meaning metal recycled from scrap. Over the same twelve months it cut its 2026 mine production growth forecast twice, from 2.3% to 1.6% to 1.3%. Mine supply growth was marked down, and the refined balance still tipped into surplus.

That is the sentence to hold on to: the surplus is a demand and scrap story, and the shortfall is a mine story.

The mine story is visible inside the refined number too. ICSG expects primary electrolytic refined production, the part made from mined concentrate, to decline in 2026 because concentrate availability is constrained, with output at the Grasberg mine in Indonesia and the Kamoa-Kakula mine in the DRC still constrained after incidents in 2025. That decline partly offsets the growth from SX-EW (solvent extraction and electrowinning, a leaching route that makes cathode without a smelter) and from scrap, which is why ICSG has refined production edging up only 0.4% in 2026. The IEA counts 1.5 million tonnes of mine supply disruption in 2025, over 6% of global mined supply for the year, and expects a full recovery at Grasberg only in 2028 (IEA, Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026, July 2026).

What that balance means for the price is covered in how the major banks see copper prices.

Mine supply versus refined balance: why both statements are true

Whether there is a copper shortage depends on where in the chain you measure it, and a copper supply deficit in mined supply is a different thing from one in refined metal. Copper moves from mine to concentrate, from concentrate to smelter and refinery, and from refinery to cathode. Refined supply also includes SX-EW cathode and recycled scrap, which is how refined output can grow in a year when mines do not.

ICSG’s balance is refined production minus apparent refined usage, and for China it counts reported data only: production plus net trade, adjusted for Shanghai Futures Exchange stock changes. Unreported stocks held by the State Reserve Bureau, producers, consumers and traders sit outside it, which is why ICSG notes that actual balances have, on recent occasions, deviated from its forecasts.

Each measure has a job. The refined balance is the one-to-two-year read on whether inventories build or draw. The mine-supply view is the multi-year read on whether the metal will exist to be refined at all.

ICSG, S&P Global and the IEA compared

Three sources, three horizons, three definitions of a copper deficit. Setting them side by side shows why their headline numbers can all be right at once.

The three headline numbers answer different questions and are not additive: a refined balance for 2026 and 2027, a mined-supply gap for 2035 and a demand shortfall for 2040.

Why new mine supply outweighs any single year’s balance

Surplus years do not build mines. S&P Global puts the average time for a new copper mine to go from discovery to production at 17 years, and the IEA’s July 2026 Outlook puts it at around 17 years too. On that average, a mine producing in 2035 was found around 2018. The copper available in the early 2030s is largely being decided by projects that already exist.

The IEA measures its gap against exactly those projects. On the pipeline of existing and announced projects, global primary copper supply could face a 25% deficit in 2035 under today’s policy settings, narrower than around 30% in the previous year’s Outlook, which the IEA attributes to project progress in the DRC, Zambia, Peru and Canada. That comparison is the useful part: every project that advances moves the number.

Which projects advance is a filter, and the filter is getting tighter. The IEA finds the average grade of the world’s copper mines has fallen 40% since 1991, and that only 5% of the copper deposits discovered in the last 35 years were found in the last decade. Projects with a defined resource, a funded study and a location close to infrastructure are the kind that could clear it.

Demand drivers, from grid upgrades to AI data centres, are covered in why copper demand is rising, so this page stays on supply.

Where Mt Chalmers fits

Mt Chalmers is QMines’ development project, and it is the kind of project that pipeline needs. The Mt Chalmers copper-gold project is 100% owned by QMines, 17km north-east of Rockhampton and close to the coast and existing infrastructure. It holds a JORC Mineral Resource of 11.3Mt at 0.75% copper and 0.42g/t gold, with 88% in the Measured and Indicated categories.

The project is advancing through a fully funded DFS after QIC’s $15 million investment in April 2026, and a 20,000 metre multi-rig drilling program is underway across the project.

One project will not move a market that mines about 23.5 million tonnes of copper a year (ICSG’s 2026 forecast table). A pipeline is built from projects like this one, and those already through to a funded study are the ones that could help answer the gap in the 2030s. For the state-level picture, see our guide to copper mining in Queensland, and for how Mt Chalmers sits among its listed peers, our guide to ASX copper stocks.

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