Largest Copper Producers: Country-by-Country Output

Chile produced 5.3 million metric tons of mined copper in 2025, about 23% of the world’s 23 million metric ton total, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. That single fact answers most of the searches that bring readers to this page — “largest copper producer,” “top copper producing countries,” “which country produces more copper.” The rest of this article is the part an AI summary can’t hand you: the full country ranking with tonnage, how mine-level output compares to country totals, how the LME price moved in 2026, and a calculator for the copper in a deposit.

The short version: Chile leads at 5.3 million metric tons, the Democratic Republic of Congo has moved into second at 3.2 million metric tons, Peru holds third at 2.7 million metric tons, China produces 1.8 million metric tons domestically despite being the world’s largest consumer, Russia is fifth at 1.3 million metric tons, and the United States is sixth at 1.0 million tons of recoverable copper — 70% of it mined in Arizona alone. Together the top five account for roughly 14.3 million of the 23 million metric ton global total, about 62%, per USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026.

Country-by-Country Copper Production Table

This is the ranking that answers “top copper producing countries,” “biggest copper producers,” and “global copper producers” in one place. The table below gives 2025 mine production and reserves by country, as reported by USGS.

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Mine output of the eight largest copper producers

Thousand tonnes of copper content, 2025 estimate

Note the reshuffle from where this same list stood a few years back: the DRC has overtaken Peru and China to claim second place outright. USGS lists it at 2,990 thousand tonnes in 2024 and 3,200 in 2025, ahead of Peru in both years — a shift covered in more depth in our piece on global copper, gold, and oil production by country. USGS publishes this table each year in the Mineral Commodity Summaries. The edition used here is dated February 2026, and its 2025 figures are estimates. For a faster read, the International Copper Study Group (ICSG) issues a monthly press release with preliminary mine and refinery data.

Copper Mine Production and Reserves by Country

The table below ranks the leading producers by 2025 mine output and adds each country’s reserves, the copper that is economic to mine at the time of the estimate. Russia, not the United States, is fifth. Figures are thousand metric tons of copper content from USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026; 2025 production is estimated.

*For Australia, USGS notes that JORC-compliant reserves were 27 million tons.

Two things stand out. Chile holds the largest reserves as well as the largest output, with 180 million tons, about 18% of the 980 million world total. And Australia ranks second for reserves while mining less than Zambia, although USGS notes that only 27 million tons of its reserves meet JORC-compliant or equivalent rules.

Some context for the table. USGS puts world reserves at 980 million tons, about 43 times one year of mine output (USGS, 2026). A separate USGS assessment, based on 2015 data, found 1.5 billion tons of identified copper resources not yet mined and an estimated 3.5 billion tons undiscovered (Hammarstrom and others, USGS, 2019). Year on year, Indonesia fell from 1,010 to 710 thousand tons while Russia rose from 1,020 to 1,300 and Zambia from 823 to 940. The Grasberg mine in Indonesia had a mud rush in September 2025, and ICSG says its output is still constrained (ICSG, September 2026).

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Who gained and who lost between 2024 and 2025

Mine production, thousand tonnes of copper content

Largest Copper Producers by Market Cap vs. Tonnage — Why We’re Not Ranking This

A meaningful share of readers who land here are searching “largest copper producers by market cap,” expecting a list of the biggest mining companies by share price. That is a different question from tonnage, and it needs a different, live source: company market capitalization moves daily and depends on the latest quarterly filings from firms like BHP, Rio Tinto, Freeport-McMoRan, and Southern Copper, plus Codelco’s state-owned financials, none of which appear in the government production statistics this article draws on. Rather than print a number that’s stale before you finish reading it, use your brokerage’s screener or a financial data terminal filtered to “copper mining” and sort by market cap — that gives you the live figure, not a snapshot from whenever this was written.

What government sources do give you reliably is tonnage and reserves, which is a better proxy for long-term production capacity than a share price that reacts to quarterly earnings and macro sentiment. That’s the ranking above, and it’s the one that stays accurate longest.

Chile: The Largest Copper Producer by a Wide Margin

Chile’s 5.3 million metric tons in 2025 is more than the DRC and China combined (5.0 million metric tons). The country’s geology does the heavy lifting: the Atacama Desert region hosts multiple porphyry copper deposits at a scale found almost nowhere else, including Escondida, which alone produced 1,347.6 thousand metric tons in 2025 — roughly a quarter of Chile’s national total from one mine, per MINING.COM’s World Mining Rankings.

• Concentration: Two of the ten largest copper mines in 2025, Escondida and Collahuasi, are in Chile (MINING.COM ranking, 2025 output). See how the extraction methods at scale compare with our overview of open-pit mining processes.
• Output trend: ICSG reports Chilean mine output down 7% in the first seven months of 2026, mainly at El Teniente, Escondida and Spence (ICSG, September 2026).
• Water constraint: Northern Chile’s mines operate in one of the driest regions on Earth, so water supply is a standing operating issue.

For the mechanics of how Chile’s output feeds into worldwide totals, our country-by-country production breakdown lays out the same USGS series across multiple commodities.

DRC: The Fastest-Rising Copper Producer

At 3.2 million metric tons in 2025, the Democratic Republic of Congo now sits ahead of both Peru and China — a position it did not hold a decade ago. The Copperbelt region straddling the DRC-Zambia border carries some of the richest copper-cobalt ore bodies known, and the two metals are frequently mined from the same deposit, so the DRC matters for cobalt supply as well. Our look at the Sicomines copper-cobalt operation covers one of the projects driving that growth.

• Recent trend: USGS puts DRC mine output at 2,990 thousand tonnes in 2024 and 3,200 in 2025 (USGS, 2026).
• 2026 output: ICSG says DRC concentrate output fell about 30% in the first seven months of 2026 after a seismic event at the Kamoa mine in 2025, while SX-EW output rose about 6%, so total mine output was about flat (ICSG, September 2026).
• Cobalt linkage: Many Copperbelt mines produce both copper and cobalt, so one mine can supply both metals.

Peru: The Steady Second (Now Third)

Peru produced 2.7 million metric tons of copper in 2025, per USGS data cited by the Investing News Network‘s ranking of copper-producing countries. Peru’s output is anchored by a small number of very large mines — Las Bambas, Cerro Verde and Antamina, which each made 368,000 to 411,300 tonnes in 2025 (MINING.COM ranking) — rather than the extreme single-mine concentration seen in Chile.

• Recent trend: ICSG reports Peruvian mine output up 2.2% in the first seven months of 2026, mainly from higher output at Antamina (ICSG, September 2026).
• Other large mines: ICSG says output at Las Bambas, Quellaveco, Cerro Verde and other major Peruvian mines was lower or about unchanged in the same period (ICSG, September 2026).

China: Producer and Consumer at Once

China mined 1.8 million metric tons of copper in 2025 — enough to rank fourth globally, yet nowhere near enough to satisfy its own demand. China is simultaneously the world’s largest copper consumer, at about 59% of world refined copper use in the first seven months of 2026 (ICSG, September 2026). Chinese companies also hold stakes in mines abroad, including Las Bambas in Peru and Kamoa-Kakula in the DRC (MINING.COM ranking, 2025). That supply gap is explored in detail in our copper demand forecast for global supply and demand trends.

• Growth: ICSG lists the Julong expansion among the projects adding mine output in China (ICSG, April 2026).
• Import reliance: China refined 14.0 million tons in 2025 against 1.8 million tons mined (USGS, 2026), so its smelters and refineries must draw on material from outside its own mines.

Refined Copper: Where China Leads

“Which country produces the most copper” has a second answer. Mines produce copper in concentrate; smelters and refineries turn it into metal. On refined output, China is far ahead. It refined an estimated 14.0 million metric tons in 2025, nearly half the world’s 29.0 million, while mining only 1.8 million, per USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026.

Infographic

From ore to refined copper in 5 steps

1. 1Mine the oreCopper ore comes from open pits and underground mines.
2. 2Make a concentrateA mill separates the copper minerals. Many mines ship this concentrate.
3. 3Smelt and refineA smelter and a refinery turn concentrate into copper metal.
4. 4Or leach the oreSome ore is leached and the copper is recovered by SX-EW, a route ICSG tracks separately.
5. 5Recycle scrapScrap is refined into new metal too. It gave about 30% of US supply (USGS, 2026).

Japan refines 1.4 million tons with no mine output at all, and Chile refined only about a third of what it mined (1.7 against 5.3 million tons). That split is why Chile leads the mining table and China leads the refining table.

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Mining and refining are different rankings

2025 estimates, thousand tonnes of copper

United States: Concentrated in One State

The United States produced 1.0 million tons of recoverable copper in 2025, and 70% of that came from a single state: Arizona, per USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026. That concentration is the most useful fact in this section — if you’re tracking US copper supply risk, Arizona mine conditions (labor, permitting, water access) matter for national supply.

• Key mines: Morenci (Arizona), Bingham Canyon (Utah), and Chino (New Mexico) are major US copper mines, and Morenci made 313,100 tonnes in 2025 (MINING.COM ranking).
• Geographic concentration: With 70% of national output from Arizona alone, the remaining 30% comes from Alaska, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.
• Refresh path: USGS updates this figure each year in the Mineral Commodity Summaries (February 2026 edition for 2025 data).

USGS counts 26 US copper mines in 2025, and 17 of them made more than 99% of mine output. Net import reliance was 57% of apparent consumption, and refined copper imports were an estimated 1.7 million tons (USGS, 2026). Copper recovered from scrap contributed about 30% of US copper supply. On 7 November 2025, copper was added to the US Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals (90 FR 50494).

Largest Copper Mines, Not Countries

“Largest copper mines” is a distinct search from “largest copper producing countries,” and the two rankings don’t line up cleanly, because a country’s total is the sum of many mines while a mine ranking isolates single operations. The world’s ten largest copper mines combined produced 4.9 million tonnes in 2025 — less than Chile’s national total of 5.3 million metric tons — which tells you how concentrated mine-level production really is. Escondida in Chile topped that list individually at 1,347.6 thousand metric tons, according to MINING.COM’s World Mining Rankings.

The gap between one mine’s output and a country’s total is the clearest evidence of how concentrated copper supply is: an outage at one large mine can change the world total. ICSG says output at the Grasberg and Kamoa mines is still constrained after major incidents in 2025 (ICSG, April 2026).

The 10 Biggest Copper Mines Output

MINING.COM’s May 2026 ranking lists the ten largest mines by copper produced in 2025. Together they produced 4.9 million tonnes, more than a fifth of world mine output, per MINING.COM.

The table shows nine of the ten. The tenth is Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia (345,100 tonnes), owned by Rio Tinto and the Mongolian government. Morenci in Arizona (313,100 tonnes) falls just outside the ten. None of Codelco’s mines made the list.

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The eight largest copper mines by 2025 output

Thousand tonnes of copper produced in 2025

Copper Price and the Market Balance

The LME copper cash-settlement price closed 2025 at $12,504 per tonne and stood at $14,740 per tonne on September 25, 2026, about 18% higher, per LME cash-settlement data compiled by Westmetall. ICSG gives the 2026 high, up to 22 September, as $14,850 a tonne (17 August) and the low as $11,826 (19 March). A record near $14,500 a tonne in January 2026 was reported by MINING.COM. For a live read, check the Trading Economics copper page directly; LME prices move intraday and any number printed here is already a historical snapshot by the time you read it.

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LME copper cash price by month

Monthly average, US dollars per tonne, January to September 2026

The market balance has changed since late 2025. ICSG forecast a refined copper deficit of 150,000 tonnes for 2026 in October 2025. In April 2026 it replaced that with a surplus of about 96,000 tonnes for 2026 and 377,000 tonnes for 2027, citing lower usage and more refined output from scrap. The price still ended the period higher: the monthly average was $14,483 a tonne in September 2026 against $13,089 in January. ICSG warns that outcomes have differed from its forecasts before, and that unreported stocks in China can change the balance. For scale, a 96,000 tonne surplus is well under 1% of the 23 million tonnes mined each year (USGS, 2026).

ICSG’s September 2026 release covers the first seven months of 2026. World mine production fell about 1%. Chilean output fell 7%, concentrate output in Indonesia fell 29% at Grasberg, DRC output was about flat and Peru rose 2.2% (ICSG, September 2026). Stocks at the LME, COMEX and SHFE reached 997,600 tonnes at the end of August 2026, the highest since June 2003. The monthly averages in the chart come from Westmetall’s LME cash-settlement tables. Prices are historical records, not a forecast.

How Producers Are Adding Supply

New supply comes from new mines, expansions, repairs after outages and scrap recycling. ICSG’s April 2026 forecast sets out where it expects growth, and the points below follow it.

ICSG cut its 2026 mine growth forecast from 2.3% to 1.6%, mainly because of lower expected output in the DRC, Chile and Indonesia. It expects 2.3% growth in 2027, with better output in Chile and Zambia and a recovery in Indonesia and the DRC (ICSG, April 2026).

• Ramp-ups and expansions: ICSG expects the 2026 growth to come mainly from the Oyu Tolgoi ramp-up in Mongolia, the Malmyz mine in Russia, the Julong expansion in China and the Almalyk mines in Uzbekistan (ICSG, April 2026).
• Recycling and secondary recovery: ICSG expects scrap-based refined output to grow 5.7% in 2027, and it grew 4.3% in the first seven months of 2026 (ICSG, April and September 2026).
• Satellite and remote monitoring: Satellite imagery can show land-use change and vegetation around a mine site between site visits.
• Traceability demands: Buyers can ask for blockchain-based traceability to verify where material comes from.

For readers researching new mining regions specifically, our comparison of renewable versus nonrenewable energy sources in mining covers the operational trade-offs producers are weighing as they expand.

Satellite Monitoring for Copper Sites

Farmonaut provides satellite-based monitoring that can be used to track site conditions around a mine without sending ground crews for every check.

• Satellite Monitoring: Multispectral imagery and NDVI analytics track vegetation health and land-use change around mine perimeters throughout the extraction lifecycle.
• AI-Based Advisory: Our advisory systems turn satellite data into written advice.
• Blockchain Traceability: Our blockchain-powered traceability tools record where material comes from.
• Fleet and Resource Management: Fleet management tools track vehicle use and logistics.
• Environmental Impact Tracking: Our carbon footprint monitoring tool tracks emissions.
• API Access: Integrate directly via Farmonaut’s API, with setup details in our Developer Docs.

Farmonaut is also available as a web app, on Android and on iOS.

FAQ: Largest Copper Producers

Conclusion: A Five-Country Market With One Clear Leader

Copper production remains concentrated in five countries that together supply roughly 62% of the 23-million-metric-ton global total, and within that group, Chile’s 5.3-million-metric-ton output still exceeds the combined total of the third- and fourth-ranked producers, Peru and China. The bigger structural shift is the DRC’s rise past Peru into second place; ICSG reports DRC mine output about flat in the first seven months of 2026 (ICSG, September 2026).

Two numbers to watch are ICSG’s refined balance forecast (a surplus of about 96,000 tonnes for 2026, as of April 2026) and the LME cash price ($14,740 per tonne on September 25, 2026). Track both: USGS republishes the country rankings each year, and Trading Economics updates the LME price continuously — bookmark the producer country list and the live price feed rather than relying on any single snapshot, including this one.