ASX Copper ETFs Compared: Fees, Holdings and Size

Which ASX ETFs hold copper miners?

Two ASX-listed ETFs are built only from copper miners: the Global X Copper Miners ETF (ASX: WIRE) and the ETFS Global Pure Play Copper Miners ETF (ASX: CPPR), which ETF Shares lists among its funds. WIRE is far larger, with A$874.5 million under management on 14 October 2026 and a management cost of 0.65% a year. CPPR is new, charges 0.39% and is still small. Wider resources and critical-minerals funds hold some copper too, but BHP, gold and energy shares dominate the Australian resources funds.

An exchange traded fund (ETF) is a fund whose units trade on the stock exchange like a share. Every fund below holds company shares, not copper metal, so its price follows the shares of miners and not the copper price one for one. The table sorts the six funds from most to least copper-focused, using each issuer’s own page.

Sources and dates: Global X (WIRE, 14 to 15 October 2026), ReviewETF for the CPPR index and fee, Betashares for XMET (14 October 2026), VanEck for MVR, Betashares for QRE (14 to 15 October 2026) and State Street for OZR (14 October 2026). Net assets: WIRE A$874.5 million (14 October 2026), MVR A$791.2 million, QRE A$433.2 million and OZR A$270.4 million (all 15 October 2026), XMET A$126.7 million (14 October 2026), CPPR A$5.96 million (ReviewETF, 16 October 2026). Funds change their holdings and fees, so read the product disclosure statement (PDS) before you act.

How we sorted these funds

We kept ASX-listed ETFs whose index, objective or named holdings put copper producers at the centre, plus the three large Australian resources funds that most readers will already know. The sort key is how much of the fund is tied to copper, taken from the issuer’s index description and its latest holdings list. Fees, size and track record come second. This is a comparison of published facts, not a recommendation, and it is not investment advice.

ReviewETF’s list of critical-minerals ETFs (retrieved 16 October 2026) shows two copper-only funds on the ASX, WIRE and CPPR, alongside lithium, rare-earth and broader metals funds. Other thematic metal funds exist, such as battery-metal and green-metal funds. They are left out because copper is not what they are built around.

WIRE: the largest copper miners fund on the ASX

Fund focus: readers who want the biggest and longest-running copper fund. Fund facts: launched on 21 November 2022; management cost 0.65% a year; A$874.5 million under management and 37.7 million units on 14 October 2026; rebalances twice a year; not currency hedged; pays distributions twice a year, with a 12-month yield of 3.01% on 2 October 2026 (Global X).

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WIRE: ten largest holdings

Share of the fund, per cent, 15 October 2026

The fund follows its index closely. Global X reports a one-year total return of 24.69% to 14 October 2026 against 25.98% for the index, a tracking difference of 1.29 points. Past performance is not a reliable guide to future results, and a strong year says more about the copper cycle than about the fund.

Pros: size, a spread of 41 holdings across Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia, and ASX-listed names such as BHP (5.32%), Sandfire Resources (3.79%) and Develop Global (0.41%). Cons: the highest fee of the copper-only pair, and diversified majors (BHP, Glencore) bring iron ore, coal and trading income that has little to do with copper. It also holds Hong Kong-listed Zijin Mining and Jiangxi Copper, so Chinese market and currency risk comes with it.

CPPR: the new equal-weight copper fund

Fund focus: readers who want a cheaper, more evenly spread basket of copper-first companies and accept a very small fund. Fund facts: management cost 0.39% a year; tracks the BITA Global Copper Miners Equal Weight Index; listed on the ASX on 27 April 2026 per ReviewETF, alongside a lithium miners fund; the launch was reported on 28 April 2026 (Financial Standard, 28 April 2026). ReviewETF describes the index as listed companies whose revenue comes mainly from copper exploration, extraction and processing, and says the fund is not currency hedged.

Equal weighting means each company is held at a similar size, so the fund leans towards mid-sized producers. Market Matters put the top holdings at 3.5% to 4.4% each in May 2026 (Market Matters, 23 May 2026). Its market value was only A$3.5 million then. ReviewETF lists A$5.96 million on 16 October 2026, although the same page’s text gives about A$9.5 million at June 2026, so the size is still in the single-digit millions.

Pros: lower fee, a purer copper link, and less weight in iron-ore and coal earnings. Cons: no long track record, and a fund this small can have wide gaps between the buy and sell price. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has warned that the bid/offer spread on an ETF can widen, so check the spread on the ASX before you place an order (ASIC, 2018).

We cover a connected topic in Copper Mining Training Programs: 8 Options Compared.

For a closer look at a related question, see our guide: VGPMX Price: NAV, Holdings and Fees From Filings.

XMET and the resources ETFs: how much copper do they hold?

XMET (Betashares Critical Minerals ETF) holds producers of copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, manganese, silver and rare earths. Its management cost is 0.69%. On 14 October 2026 its top holdings were Anglo American (6.1%), Teck Resources (5.9%), Southern Copper (5.8%), Freeport-McMoRan (5.7%), BHP (5.7%), Antofagasta (5.5%), Lundin Mining (5.2%) and First Quantum Minerals (4.8%). The eight companies in that list all mine copper, though several also produce other metals, and together they make up 44.7% of the fund. Copper-linked miners are a large part of XMET but not all of it. Fund focus: readers who want copper plus other battery and grid metals in one holding.

MVR, QRE and OZR are Australia-only resources funds with fees of 0.35%, 0.34% and 0.34%. They are the cheapest here, but copper is a minor part. Betashares classes only 1.7% of QRE as copper on 30 September 2026, while 56.7% sits in diversified metals and mining, 19.3% in gold and 11.6% in oil and gas (Betashares). The largest holdings in OZR on 14 October 2026 were BHP (39.97%), Woodside Energy (8.16%), Rio Tinto (7.71%) and Northern Star Resources (4.59%).

The lesson is that a mining ETF is not a copper ETF. Check the sector breakdown in the fund’s fact sheet. Do not assume that a resources fund has a third of its money in copper.

Compare management costs

Management cost is the yearly fee the issuer takes from the fund, shown as a percentage of the fund’s value. It is not the only cost: brokerage and the bid/offer spread also apply when you trade. The chart shows the fee in basis points, where 100 basis points equal 1%.

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Management cost of six ASX funds

Basis points a year (100 basis points = 1%), October 2026

The copper-only funds cost 39 to 65 basis points, while the broad Australian resources funds cost 34 to 35. XMET is the highest at 69.

ASX-listed copper miners behind the funds

Several ETF holdings also trade directly on the ASX. The table gives each company’s latest published copper figure. The figures cover different periods and units, so they are not a like-for-like ranking. For a wider list of smaller explorers, see our guide to junior copper miners.

BHP’s weight shows why the funds above behave as they do. It is about 40% of QRE and OZR, and it is 5.32% of WIRE. For the geology behind these mines, read our guides to copper deposit types and top countries and porphyry copper deposits.

▶ Explains in plain words what remote sensing for mining means and why agreement between several instruments matters. · 2:01

Where Australia sits in world copper supply

Copper miners in Australia compete in a global market. The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates Australian mine output at 730 thousand tonnes (kt) in 2025, down from 765 kt in 2024. That puts Australia eighth among the countries it lists for 2025, behind Chile, Congo (Kinshasa), Peru, China, Russia, the United States and Zambia (USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, February 2026). Australia is not near the top in output, but USGS lists its reserves at 100 million tonnes, second only to Chile at 180 million. Reserves here are USGS’s economic-resource measure. USGS adds that 27 million tons of that meet the Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) code or an equivalent standard.

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Copper mine production, six selected countries

Thousand tonnes of copper in mine output; Russia, Zambia and other producers not shown

The price side matters for miner profits too. The London Metal Exchange (LME) cash price averaged 440 US cents a pound in 2025 on USGS’s estimate, up from 414.7 in 2024 and 384.8 in 2023. Because the funds above trade in Australian dollars but hold shares priced in several currencies, exchange rates add a second layer to the copper price.

What does an ETF fee cost you?

Fees look small, but they run every year. On A$10,000, a 0.65% fee is A$65 a year and a 0.39% fee is A$39, a gap of A$26. The calculator below lets you enter your own amount, holding period and the two fees you want to compare. It treats your balance as flat, so it understates the cost if the fund grows.

Risks to check before buying any copper fund

• Concentration: WIRE’s top ten holdings are half the fund.
• Copper price cycles: USGS shows annual LME averages moving by about 55 cents a pound between 2021 and 2025, and a miner’s profit swings by more than the metal.
• Currency: WIRE is not currency hedged, and ReviewETF reports the same for CPPR.
• Liquidity and spread: a small fund can be costly to trade. Look at the buy and sell prices on the ASX during market hours.
• Operating risk: high water levels, tailings approvals and grade decline hit individual mines, as 29Metals and Capstone show in their 2026 reports.
• Index rules: equal-weight and market-weight indexes behave differently in a rally. Read the index methodology on the issuer’s site.

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Annual average copper price

US cents per pound, 2021 to 2025 (2025 estimated)

Fund holdings tell you about companies, not about the rock. Explorers use satellite imagery to map the clay, iron-oxide and other alteration minerals that can sit above copper systems, a method we describe in our post on remote sensing for copper prospecting. Farmonaut returns satellite-derived exploration targets for a licence boundary, ahead of any resource estimate. Our satellite mineral detection page describes what the service delivers. For a wider view of copper funds and stocks listed in the US and elsewhere, see our list of copper ETFs and mining stocks.

▶ Covers the limits of satellite mineral exploration that matter in mining due diligence. · 2:08

Frequently asked questions

Which ASX ETFs invest in copper miners?

The Global X Copper Miners ETF (WIRE) and the ETFS Global Pure Play Copper Miners ETF (CPPR) are the two built only from copper miners. The Betashares Critical Minerals ETF (XMET) holds eight large copper-mining companies among its top holdings, alongside lithium, silver and rare-earth miners. The Australian resources funds MVR, QRE and OZR hold only small copper slices.

What is the difference between WIRE and CPPR?

WIRE follows a market-capitalisation index, so larger miners get larger weights, and it charges 0.65%. CPPR follows an equal-weight index of copper-first companies and charges 0.39%. WIRE had A$874.5 million under management on 14 October 2026, while CPPR is listed at A$5.96 million by ReviewETF (16 October 2026).

Which ASX copper ETF has the lowest fee?

Among copper-only funds, CPPR at 0.39% a year. The resources funds QRE and OZR charge 0.34% and MVR 0.35%, but copper is a small part of what they hold.

How much copper is in an ASX resources ETF?

Very little. Betashares classes 1.7% of QRE as copper (30 September 2026), and BHP alone is about 40% of QRE and OZR. BHP does produce copper, but it also produces iron ore, coal and other commodities.

Which ASX-listed shares are copper miners?

BHP, Sandfire Resources, Capstone Copper, 29Metals and Develop Global all report copper output. The table above gives each company’s latest published figure and its ASX code. Check the company’s own announcements before relying on any number.

Do ASX copper ETFs pay distributions?

WIRE pays twice a year and showed a 12-month yield of 3.01% on 2 October 2026. Distributions vary with the dividends of the underlying miners. Check each fund’s distribution history in its PDS.

Are the ASX copper ETFs hedged for currency?

WIRE is not currency hedged according to Global X. ReviewETF reports that CPPR is unhedged. Both funds hold shares priced in US dollars, Canadian dollars, British pounds and other currencies, so the Australian dollar affects returns.

What does a fee of 0.65% a year cost on A$10,000?

A$65 a year if the balance stays at A$10,000. At 0.39% the cost is A$39. Brokerage and the buy-sell spread are extra.

How big is copper mining in Australia?

USGS estimates 730 kt of mine production in 2025 and puts Australia eighth among producing countries. It lists Australian reserves of 100 million tonnes, the second largest after Chile.

Is a copper ETF the same as owning copper?

No. These funds own shares of mining companies. Company results, costs, taxes and debt all affect the share price, as well as the copper price.