Earth-i’s SAVANT Global Copper Monitoring Index has recorded an average 14.3% of global smelting capacity as inactive – representing the highest reading for January since the monitoring began nearly a decade ago.
According to the index, activity fell by 2.5% from December 2025. The smelting was markedly weaker than usual, with January’s inactive capacity reading being the first in seven years to register double figures for the first month of a year, and is up 6.8% from the three-year average.
Earth-i reports at a regional level there is a stark contrast between activity in China, where 45% of capacity monitored by SAVANT is located, and the rest of the world (RoW).
With a country level inactive capacity reading of just 7.5% in the former, it is the underperformance of plants in RoW pushing the global index higher, with active tonnage over 1.2 million tonnes lower than the same time a year ago.
Asia and Oceania is the region responsible for over 850,000 tonnes of this change, a result of the closure of the Isabel Leyte plant in the Philippines, as well as the temporary shuttering of the Gresik and Manyar smelters in Indonesia following a mud rush incident at the associated Grasberg Mine in September 2025.
Earth-i adds that Asia and Oceania was the only region to record a month-on-month increase in smelting activity of 4.7%. Activity also shows the greatest relative fall in Africa where the continent’s inactive capacity series rose by 12.9% to 28.4%.
Earth-i is a geospatial intelligence company using machine learning, artificial intelligence and earth observation data to provide unique and relevant insights, derived from diverse geospatial data.
The SAVANT platform provides indicators of smelter activities around the globe.
Data is collected and analysed using advanced algorithms derived from artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques. Data is taken from several different earth observation satellites and our global and regional indices are updated daily to give consistent, insightful and dependable results.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: iStock
