One of the nation’s oldest copper producers, Revere Copper, is investing in two large capacity projects to boost copper output in the United States.
The investment will increase the 221-year-old upstate New York company’s copper bar output by 30 million pounds over the next two to three years. Revere said the project should be fully functional by the end of 2022.
At a time when the White House is considering using the Defense Production Act (DPA) to support domesticating local supply of metals needed for electric vehicles, Revere Copper is taking matters into its own hands. Revere is also investing in new copper melting technology as much of their copper product is made from high-grade recyclable copper scrap metal. Their new coreless furnace will result in another 30 million pounds of additional casting capacity to feed Revere’s copper sheet, copper strip, and copper plate product lines. The project is slated for completion in early 2023. Both projects are designed to be scalable.
The demand for copper is expected to grow over the next decade as the U.S. auto fleet goes through a phase of planned obsolescence of the internal combustion engines in favor of battery-powered cars. These vehicles will require more copper than a traditional vehicle.
There is some rumor that the White House is at least considering an Executive Order that would use the powers of the DPA to alleviate shortages of critical minerals and metals needed along the clean energy supply chain.
Metals and mining are on everyone’s mind these days.
Geopolitical disruptions and an over-reliance on China have brought it to the fore.
In April 2021, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded $19 million for 13 projects to support the production of rare-earth elements and critical minerals vital for the clean energy economy. Many of these awards were made to universities for research, rather than for mining, however.
Then again in September 2021, the DOE awarded $30 million in funding for 13 national lab and university research projects focused on developing substitutes for, diversifying the supply of, and improving the reuse and recycling of rare-earth elements and platinum-group elements to support cleaner energy development.
The war in Ukraine and the White House’s focus on climate change have both led to concern about domestic supply.
Companies like Revere rely heavily on scrap metal to make their products. With commodity prices rising, some have raised concern about scrap metal exporters shipping more of the high-grade scraps to China. China state-owned companies are often willing to pay more for it, sucking the best scraps out of the market either for storage or for resale to Chinese copper mills.
China is also concerned about Western businesses rejecting their imports due to carbon intensity in metal fabrication, so they too are using more recycled copper.
If the U.S. is going to become a cleantech powerhouse, it will need more original source materials closer to home – whether it is copper or nickel, polysilicon or neodymium.
Revere Copper’s investment is an example of the private sector’s recognition of rising demand, and the need to keep supplies as local as possible in order to support that demand. Localization adds to supply chain resiliency. The alternative leads to import dependency.
Revere Copper is as American as they come. The company’s origin story began in Canton, Massachusetts when it was first launched by Paul Revere.
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