Our Market
The Future Runs on Copper…
Copper (symbol Cu) is a reddish-orange, soft, malleable, and ductile metallic element known for its unparalleled electrical and thermal conductivity, high corrosion resistance, and natural antibacterial properties. As one of the first metals used by humans, it is now a vital industrial material found in electronics, plumbing, and construction, and forms alloys like brass and bronze.
Copper is also an essential trace mineral for human health, playing a role in energy production, connective tissues, and the nervous and immune systems.
In 2025, copper was endowed with critical mineral status by the US for the first time in recognition of its essential function in the green energy transition and the rapidly expanding digital sector, set against the risks to its supply chain, which include limited global production capacity, the geographic concentration of mines and Chinese dominance of its processing and refinement.
Energy Transition
Copper is indispensable in the transition to sustainable energy, due to its critical use in EVs, solar panels, wind turbines and the modernisation of power grids.
Infrastructure and Housing
Copper is the backbone of construction and urbanisation. Its superior qualities make it ideal for transmitting electricity efficiently in our world’s increasingly complex electrical systems.
Healthcare
Copper’s antimicrobial properties can significantly reduce infection risk in hospitals, public transportation and other high-touch areas, while its sterility and conductivity make it a vital component of medical devices.
Digital Sector
Copper underpins digital technologies. Its conductivity and durability are essential to powering data centres, AI infrastructure and the networks that support the digital economy.
Food Chain
Farmers use copper as a fertilizer to increase crop yields by ensuring plant health and resilience, contributing to the stability and abundance of the global food supply.
Manufacturing
Copper’s unrivalled properties underscore its use across many industries from defence and aerospace to automotive and consumer electronics.
Market Outlook
The outlook for copper is a widening supply deficit, with the International Energy Agency (IEA) warning that demand for copper is set to outstrip supply by 30% by 2035.
Strong demand growth will continue to be driven by battery deployment in electric vehicles, the roll out of renewable energy, expanding construction, the electrification of grids and industrial equipment and the rapidly expanding digital sector.
The ability to bring new copper supply on stream is particularly challenging due to slow mine development, declining ore grades and producing mines going ever deeper underground, combined with rising project costs and a sharp slowdown in new resource discoveries. Security of supply is further threatened by China’s growing dominance of the downstream processing and semi-manufacturing of copper.
Supply side tightness means the market is vulnerable to supply shocks, such as mine disruptions and other incidents of force majeure, which could cause immediate shortfalls in supply.
The rising demand versus tight supply factors above bode well for the copper price to continue on its rising trend.
Relevance to Serval
Serval is hunting for significant new copper discoveries in the upcoming copper belts of Namibia, Botswana and Côte d’Ivoire: regions that remain relatively under-explored in contrast to their high potential.
Serval sees an opportunity to apply modern and rigorous exploration techniques, as well as the depth of experience of its management team, in order to systematically evaluate and develop these prospective opportunities with the aim of proving up multiple copper deposits to the benefit of all its stakeholders.
In so doing, the Company aims to play a role in developing a responsible and independent supply chain for sustainable copper and associated future metals.