Telecommunications companies around the world are expected to make more than $10 billion in sales of copper from recycled cables over the next 15 years. They are expected to pull them out of their networks for the benefit of the entire sector as demand for the metal is expected to rise, The Financial Times reports. According to TXO, a company that assists in processing and marketing the metal, operators will receive $720 million from the sale of copper in 2025. The British BT, the Scandinavian Telia and Telenor and the Australian Telstra have already found buyers for the metal.
The industry is moving to fiber optic networks and wireless technologies, and operators will benefit from rising copper prices – S&P Global Commodity Insights predicts a price of about $12 thousand per ton by 2035, while today we are talking about $9 thousand per ton (at its peak of $11 thousand .). Analysys Mason said some of the cables wouldn’t pay for themselves, but overall the potential net one-time benefit would be in the tens of billions of dollars globally.
Mining giant BHP forecasts that by 2050, global demand for copper will increase by 70% compared to 2021, a shortage created by the energy transition and active construction of power grids. TXO says that when demand surges, mining companies will not be able to meet it, causing supply shortages and rising prices.
Image Source: Johnny Briggs/Unsplash
According to media reports, Telstra earned AU$211 million ($132 million) in two financial years from sales of copper from cables. BT said it would pre-pay for forward sales in the 2024 financial year and agreed a £105m ($129m) start-up deal with recycling company EMR to help with cable recovery and recycling – BT could earn more than £1.5bn ($2bn) by 2030 ). Telia has already earned more than €25 million ($26 million) from the sale of old copper cables and intends to receive €2–3 million ($2.08–3.12 million) in 2025.
Telenor is preparing to sell about 250 tonnes of copper in 2025, which will bring in just over €1 million ($1.04 million) under an agreement with one of the contractors. In the future, the company intends to receive more than €68 million ($70.83 million) from copper sales. The American AT&T has recently actively taken up the task of removing old cables. Since 2021, it has processed more than 32 thousand tons of copper, and used the proceeds to develop the network. However, last year the company was forced to remove tens of tons of lead-sheathed cable from Lake Tahoe in the United States – the economic effect of these actions remains questionable, since the company itself clearly did not strive to clean up the reservoir.
Of course, for most operators such cash flows are not of particular importance, and sometimes there is no point in fiddling with old cables. The Belgian Proximus announced that the amounts received from the sale of copper were insignificant due to the associated costs of extracting it from the cables. The Netherlands’ KPN tried selling copper in small quantities, but getting underground cables proved difficult and quite expensive. Australian Macquarie notes that it takes a lot of time to extract cables in accordance with all rules and regulations, and recycling requires an individual approach to obtain salable metal.