The German railway company Deutsche Bahn (DB), in addition to having to rehabilitate almost all of its infrastructure, has to fight against copper theft. Only in 2022 and according to the economic magazine Handelsblattdamages worth around 6.6 million euros were caused.
According to the newspaper, in 2023 2,644 trains have been affected by the theft of said metal, which has caused more than 700 hours of delays.
And copper is not only stolen in the DB but also in private buildings, church towers, copper factories and recycling companies.
Shortage of a critical raw material
Copper is a metal highly sought after for its electrical conductivity. All electrical appliances, from toasters to electric cars, need copper. Joachim Berlenbach, founder, CEO of ERI AG (Earth Resource Investment) and expert on the subject, believes that “future demand for copper will increase enormously.”
Berlenbach told DW that “we simply do not have enough of this critical raw material. This is often ignored by energy transition advocates.”
Why is copper so expensive?
Supply and demand also determines the price of copper. Berlenbach affirms that the economic development of emerging countries is one of the reasons why the use of this metal will increase more and more. Rising GDP in countries like China and India will lead to improvements in living standards: “More cars will be driven, more air conditioning will be needed, and houses will be built with electrical wiring. The demand for energy, electricity and therefore also for copper, will increase greatly,” he explains.
According to the company ERI AG, around 700 million tons of copper would have been extracted in the history of humanity and “it is estimated that we will need approximately the same amount of copper in the next 30 years.”
At the same time, “it is increasingly difficult to find copper deposits for extraction. Existing geological deposits are concentrated in a few countries, for example Chile and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the geopolitical risk for mining companies is not insignificant. These companies will only risk working there if it brings them economic returns,” he says.
Where does the stolen metal go?
The newspaper Tagesspiegel quoted the general director of the Association of German Metal Traders and Recyclers (VDM), Ralf Schmitz, who stated that getting rid of stolen non-ferrous metal in Germany is difficult, because, when copper is sold, the personal data of the members is recorded. commercial. In case of major thefts, the other members of the VDM are warned, for example, Poland, a country that “has a system as efficient as the one we have in Germany.”
For this reason, Schmitz suspects that metal thieves prefer to sell their loot abroad, especially because customs cannot adequately control these movements of goods. “Most of the material is no longer going to Europe,” Schmitz told the Tagesspiegel. “Most of the material, that’s my theory, goes through overseas containers,” he said.
“There is no substitute for copper”
Thieves are not only becoming better organized, but they are also more ruthless. During the investigation into the theft of millions of euros from the German metallurgical company Aurubis, officials confiscated parts of the stolen assets: ten vehicles, more than 200,000 euros in cash, and several firearms and ammunition.
Copper theft does not only take place in Germany. Joachim Berlenbach remembers that during his stay in Johannesburg, South Africa, “one time, they ripped out all the telephone lines” on the street where he lived.
The expert can’t think of any measures to stop the thieves. The business model of non-ferrous metal pirates seems, for now, not to change in the future. Berlenbach told DW that “unfortunately there is no substitute for copper wires, it is simply a fact of physics.”
(rmr/cp)