Chile's state-owned Codelco, the world's largest copper miner, has raised the premium it will pay to ship copper to Europe to around $235 a tonne in 2023, a record high and a sharp 85 percent increase from 2022 levels, sources familiar with the situation said on Thursday.
Codelco declined to comment.
"A lot of European metals consumers want to avoid Russian copper, so they have to look elsewhere for supplies," one source said.
Copper is still in relatively tight supply, and such self-sanction by European buyers has also made negotiating a copper premium in Europe tricky.
Industry sources said some buyers had chosen to avoid Russian metals, leading to increased demand for metals looking for other sources.
Aurubis, Europe's largest copper smelter, is offering a premium of $228 a tonne over LME prices for 2023 copper to European customers, a company spokesman said on Thursday. That compares with $123 a tonne of copper it has shipped to European customers this year.
Russia exported 292,000 tonnes of copper to the EU in 2021, while the EU imported 801,000 tonnes of copper in 2021, according to Data published by Trade Data Monitor.
Montanwerke Brixlegg last month quoted a premium of $295 a tonne for low-carbon copper to be shipped to customers next year, plus a floating energy-cost surcharge, sources said.
