Copper theft: A growing economic problem

Summary

Business Daily (BBC World Service)

Episode: Copper theft: A growing economic problem

Aired: January 28, 2026
Host: Russell Padmore

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Episode Overview

This episode of Business Daily investigates the sharp rise in copper theft across the globe. Driven by soaring copper prices, criminals—both opportunistic and organized—are stealing the valuable metal from sources ranging from telecom and rail networks to mining and churches. The episode explores how this theft is disrupting industries, the economic toll it exacts, and efforts to combat it, with insights from market analysts, industry figures, law enforcement, and victims.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Surge in Copper Prices and Rising Theft

• Copper prices hit record highs in 2025: The London Metal Exchange saw prices reach $12,000 a tonne, a 40% rise—most significant spike in a decade.

• Increased demand: Growth due to batteries for electric vehicles, solar panels, and electrical cables.

• Global production disruptions: Accidents at mines in Chile, DRC, and Indonesia worsened supply.

  Charles Cooper (Wood Mackenzie): “Most mining companies are making bumper profits, but they're finding it increasingly challenging to deliver… All of this is coming at a time when the copper price is reaching record sort of highs.” [03:23]

2. Global Scale of Copper Theft

• A truly global crime: The theft of copper is rampant worldwide—from South Africa to Japan, the US, the UK, and Chile.
• Massive financial impact:
  • US: Metal theft costs businesses ~$1 billion/year; AT&T saw a jump from 71 cases (2021) to over 2,000 annually.
  • South Africa: Rail and electricity losses exceed $2 billion/year.
  • Japan: Reports of metal theft now 13 times higher than five years ago.

3. How Copper Thefts Are Operated

• Criminal tactics:

  • Impersonate utility workers, use ladders, bolt cutters, saws.
  • Attack infrastructure directly—stealing cables from poles, underground vaults, and dragging wires down with vehicles.
  • Violence and organization are increasing, often involving armed gangs.

  Alex Menard (NCTA, US): “They’ll pretend to be repair crews and pull up in a truck with yellow safety vests… Other times, it’s brute force.” [06:14]

• Disruption cause: Major outages for telecom, power, and transport—affecting up to 50,000 customers at once and causing delays across rail networks (e.g., Spain, UK).

4. Economic and Social Consequences

• Repair costs and compensation:

  • Single incidents range from $5,000 to $500,000, total repair can run into millions.
  • Service disruption leads to compensation claims and customer dissatisfaction.

  Alex Menard: “It is expensive for the providers to compensate customers who don’t get service for a long time.” [07:02]

• Vital infrastructure at risk: The damage impacts everything from public safety (streetlights, rail signals) to business livelihoods and cultural heritage (e.g., churches losing bells and roofing).

  David Parkinson (Ecclesiastical Insurance, UK): “Lead sheet, copper, roof coverings… Even copper lightning conductors, they are being stolen… We’ve even had church bells stolen.” [15:35]

5. Focus on Chile: Crime at the Source

• Copper is critical to Chile's economy: 57% of exports, employing around 1 million.

• Organized crime increasing: Groups like Venezuela's Tren de Aragua are now involved; greater violence along key transit lines and at ports.

  Professor Cindy Arnson (Johns Hopkins University): “There is a great deal of evidence that Venezuelan criminal gangs... are engaging in increasingly violent and brazen crimes which are shocking to Chileans.” [10:34]

• Security challenges:

  • Geography makes policing difficult (long, narrow country with dispersed mines).
  • Resistance to military involvement; private security is growing but costly.

6. Law Enforcement and Recycling Safeguards

• Reactions across the globe:

  • US and Australia: Authorities urge scrapyards to check seller credentials.
  • Ireland: Scrapyards record IDs, vehicle details, and maintain logs of all transactions.

  Paddy McDade (Donegal, Ireland): “First thing we do is we take their id, verify… set them up on our computer system… We have a database there of who's brought in what and when." [17:56]

• Pressure on law enforcement:

  • Increasing collaboration with police.
  • Education campaigns to encourage public reporting and deter metal recyclers from buying stolen goods.

  Alex Menard: “This isn’t petty theft or vandalism. This is actually attacking critical infrastructure… getting them to prioritize, seeking out and arresting the criminals, and then of course, prosecuting them.” [07:25]

7. The Recycling Dilemma: Where Does Stolen Copper Go?

• Markets like China are top destinations for recycled copper, drawn by high prices.

• Difficult to fully trace the illegal supply chain, though exports tend to follow the money.

  Paddy McDade: “Probably go wherever is paying the most for it, obviously... so China, a lot of the materials do go there.” [18:55]

8. Is There an End in Sight?

• The cycle of theft closely follows copper prices; when prices rise, so does crime.

• Vigilance and regulation can mitigate, but are unlikely to eliminate theft entirely.

  Paddy McDade: “As long as commodities are as high as they are, it is very lucrative for them people to be going down that avenue of theft.” [19:10]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the scale of organized crime:

  "There are criminal gangs... The violence has gone way up." – Professor Cindy Arnson [10:34]

• On economic vulnerability:

  “Today, around 57% of all exports in Chile belong to copper, a major engine of jobs...” – Gabriel Ugate [13:12]

• On law enforcement’s struggle:

  "We've been doing a lot of collaboration with the law enforcement community to explain the problem to them. This isn't petty theft or vandalism. This is actually attacking critical infrastructure…” – Alex Menard [07:25]

• On the recycling industry's responsibility:

  “You just have to look after your own business and try and proceed and invest and proceed as best you can.” – Paddy McDade [19:34]

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Key Segment Timestamps

| Segment Topic | Timestamp | |--------------------------------------------------------------------|------------| | Episode Introduction – Impact of copper theft | 01:17 | | Copper market surge, causes, and global demand | 02:25-03:53| | Global scale and financial costs of copper theft | 04:53 | | Methods of copper theft & infrastructure impact (US focus) | 06:14 | | Cost and law enforcement responses (US) | 07:02-07:43| | Organized crime in Chile and South America | 10:34 | | Security challenges and solutions in Chile | 11:56 | | Copper theft outside mining—churches, railways, urban infrastructure| 15:02-15:52| | Law enforcement advice and recycling safeguards | 16:04-18:21| | Recycling industry’s role & market destinations (Ireland) | 17:56-18:55| | Closing thoughts: Future prospects and ongoing cycle | 19:03-19:46|

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Tone & Language

• Conversational, urgent, and investigative, with a focus on the human and economic costs.
• Insights from authorities, industry insiders, and victims underline the seriousness and complexity of the issue.

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Conclusion

The global rise in copper prices has spurred a parallel surge in theft, impacting critical infrastructure, national economies, and everyday people. Despite increased regulation, vigilant policing, and industry safeguards, the lucrative nature of copper theft ensures the problem persists, ebbing and flowing with market values. This episode underscores the need for continued collaboration among law enforcement, industry, and the public—and highlights the immense economic stakes involved.

Transcript

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[Russell Padmore]

The price of copper has surged, making the metal a target for criminals across the world. Hello, I'm Russell Padmore with Business Daily on the BBC World Service examining how the theft of copper is disrupting businesses. From telecoms to railways and mining, it's costing economies billions as incidents of the crime increase.

[Alex Menard]

People propping ladders up against the pole and climbing up and using hacksaws and bolt cutters to get a stretch of wire. They'll pretend to be repair crews.

[Russell Padmore]

In Chile, organized crime gangs are attacking trains transporting copper or raiding warehouses in ports.

[Professor Cindy Arnson]

There's an increase in organized crime and common crime not only in Chile but throughout the hemisphere, where there are profits through the theft of resources. There are criminal gangs.

[Russell Padmore]

Many countries are pressing buyers of scrap metal to check the seller of copper is legitimate. I'll visit a recycling operation in Ireland.

[Paddy McDade]

First thing we do is we take their id, verify that their name address the raids of their vehicle. So then we've got a log of basically all they've brought in, what date they brought it in the vehicle they were driving.

[Russell Padmore]

The global battle to prevent the theft of copper coming up on Business Daily from the BBC. Traders at the London Metals Exchange shouting buy and sell orders in the market fringe. It seems like chaos, but they're well versed in how the price of copper has surged to record levels. In 2025, the LME's benchmark contract for the metal rose more than 40% as the commodity traded at about $12,000 a tonne, its biggest annual rise in a decade. Manufacturers have driven demand for copper to use in batteries for electric cars, solar panels or cables alongside rail lines. But last year, production was disrupted following accidents of big mining operations in Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and. And Indonesia. Charles Cooper, a director of research at Wood Mackenzie in London, has been analyzing the copper market for 30 years.

[Charles Cooper]

Most mining companies are making bumper profits, but they're finding it increasingly challenging to deliver not only to their own production guidance, but also the kind of degree of nationalism that certain companies have to face by operating in certain countries. But all of this is coming at a time when the copper price is reaching record sort of highs. Mining companies are making a lot of money on the back of high prices, but this is a challenging market to continue to deliver to meet the demand growth.

[Russell Padmore]

Are manufacturers in China the biggest buyers of copper then?

[Charles Cooper]

Well, certainly China sees the lion's share, roughly about 50%. But demand growth is sort of shifting, moving further south to the ASEAN countries as they are the sort of Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, sort of Indonesia.

[Russell Padmore]

The theft of metals which seems to be going on around the world, is that really a truly global problem now?

[Charles Cooper]

That's a great question because, you know, ultimately what we've sort of seen globally is a rise into the theft of copper, not just in places like Chile, but we also still see it in where copper is being used. You know, whether it's the electrification of transmission lines or the electrification for railway tracks. The gangs are seemingly more organised, moving to violence in order to obtain their goals. You know, they're obviously attempting to acquire or get hold of the copper cabling, which is easy to sort of melt down.

[Russell Padmore]

The United States Department of Energy estimates metal theft costs businesses about a billion dollars a year. In 2021, the telecom company AT&T recorded 71 incidents, but now it's dealing with more than 2,000 reports of cables being stolen annually. In South Africa, damage to electricity and rail networks is costing the economy more than $2 billion annually. The police in Japan are dealing with the theft of air conditioning units, which have copper inside them. Their reports of metal theft are at least 13 times more than they were five years ago. Copper thieves are causing widespread disruption.

[Professor Cindy Arnson]

Copper thieves threw trains into chaos this.

[Russell Padmore]

Morning, stopping services in in their tracks.

[Professor Cindy Arnson]

After ripping up cables to a key.

[Russell Padmore]

Signal box in western Sydney, South Africa is caught in a crime wave. It's not cash or gold criminals are after, but copper. Nationally, copper theft has become a nearly $2 billion a year problem. In Texas, thieves impersonated utility workers dragging the copper laden cables as they drove off. Theft of cables is a major problem for American telecom companies and television broadcasters. California and Texas are hotspots for the crime. As Alex Menard, a vice president at the NCTA, the Internet and Television association in Washington, D.C. explains, We've seen people.

[Alex Menard]

Propping ladders up against the pole and climbing up and using hacksaws and bolt cutters to get a stretch of wire. There are underground vaults that they will pry open and reach down and grab as much cable or wire as they can. They'll pretend to be repair crews and pull up in a truck with yellow safety vests. Other times, it's brute force. They'll connect a cable to the hanging wires and drive off in their truck and drag it down the street. It impacts more and more customers and we've seen 50,000 residential customers will get knocked out. And it can take up to 30 hours to repair those.

[Russell Padmore]

It must prove expensive from two perspectives. Number one, the cost of the repairs and replacing the cable. Number two, maybe refunds and compensation for the customers.

[Alex Menard]

Repair costs can range anywhere from a small repair job at 5,000 to up to half a million. In the aggregate, it can be several million dollars to repair. It is expensive for the providers to compensate customers who don't get service for a long time.

[Russell Padmore]

And are you putting pressure on law enforcement to actually prevent the thieves getting away with this?

[Alex Menard]

We've been doing a lot of collaboration with the law enforcement community to explain the problem to them. This isn't petty theft or vandalism. This is actually attacking critical infrastructure and so getting them to prioritize, seeking out and arresting the criminals, and then of course, prosecuting them.

[Russell Padmore]

I know if the price of copper was to fall through the floor again, that would make it not so viable for the thieves to make a profit. But beyond that, what do you think is the solution?

[Alex Menard]

We've been pushing on doing a lot of educational outreach, working with law enforcement to do public service announcements, advertising on local television and radio. You know, if you see something and make sure that you contact authorities. And the companies are also investing in maybe more sophisticated ways of protecting the network as well, with GPS and cameras and that sort of thing. Copper has to be sold somewhere. And so we are working with states to ensure that the metal recycling industry is also pulling their weight and making sure that they aren't buying stolen copper.

[Russell Padmore]

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[Russell Padmore]

I'm Russell Padmore examining how the jump in the price of copper has led to a big rise in incidence of criminals stealing the metal, creating a huge cost for economies around the world. In Chile, the world's biggest producer of copper, crime gangs are attacking trains transporting it through the Atacama desert or warehouse it imports. So is organized crime a bigger problem in Chile than it used to be? A question I put to Professor Cindy Arnson, an expert in development in Latin America at Johns Hopkins University.

[Professor Cindy Arnson]

There are organized criminal groups involved in controlling human trafficking, low level drug trafficking, particularly in the border areas in northern Chile, along its border with Peru as well as Bolivia and and there is a great deal of evidence that Venezuelan criminal gangs the trende Aragua, is engaging in increasingly violent and brazen crimes which are shocking to Chileans. The violence has gone way up when.

[Russell Padmore]

We see reports of criminals attacking copper shipments, whether they're in trains leaving the mines in The Atacama desert, or raids on copper stored in ports for export. That's a real challenge for the authorities, isn't it?

[Professor Cindy Arnson]

Chile is a very long and narrow country and there are mines from north to south. And it's a challenge for a police force and a military force to be spread that thin.

[Russell Padmore]

A few years ago, when the price of copper was quite low, criminals might not have been attracted to it.

[Professor Cindy Arnson]

I think wherever profits are high, there will be a variety of unsavory actors who will be attracted to that. You see that with the high price of gold and the kind of illegal gold mining, not so much in Chile, but in places like Colombia and Brazil and Peru.

[Russell Padmore]

What do you think is the solution to fight these criminals which are targeting the shipments of copper? Is it maybe more security from the military in the country, or perhaps increased security to guard the shipments of the metal by the mining companies themselves?

[Professor Cindy Arnson]

There's a great deal of resistance in a country like Chile to having the armed forces play a policing role. There is a long tradition of private companies, companies hiring private security. But it would be again a new challenge for the Chilean government to protect copper shipments from criminal gangs.

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[Professor Cindy Arnson]

Atacama Desert, a group of geologists found.

[Russell Padmore]

What is now the largest copper mine in the world. They found Escondida, the global commodities group bhp, promoting the Escondida copper mine in Chile. The industry has attracted significant foreign investments, so any disruption to business, including robberies by organized crime groups, threatens to undermine a key part of the economy, as I've been hearing from Gabriel Ugate, a researcher at CEP, the Centre of Public Studies in Santiago.

[Gabriel Ugate]

Today, around 57% of all exports in Chile belong to copper, a major engine of jobs, investment and technological capability in Chile. Also, it employs around 1 million jobs, both direct and indirect.

[Russell Padmore]

These criminals seem so well organised. They're well armed, they wear bulletproof vests, they have the technology to carry out the crime.

[Gabriel Ugate]

In ports, there has been cases where there are very few machines that can detect if the containers. They include some contraband, maybe copper in it, that tried to be taken out of Chile. And so there are a few machines, and even those few machines, sometimes they're not even working. So we really have a very big challenge in our ports in order to detect when these kind of things are happening. This high price of copper is incentivizing this kind of situations where you need to buy more private security and increase the costs of producing copper.

[Russell Padmore]

Many industries use copper, so criminals are targeting many places to steal it, such as railways, construction sites or telephone lines. These thieves cutting cables from Streetlights in the US left a neighborhood in St Louis in darkness. Last year, the telecom company Bell Canada dealt with more than 1200 incidents, a 40% increase on the year before. Last May, thousands of rail passengers in Spain suffered delays after criminals stole cables on the line between Madrid and Seville. And in the uk, copper theft is also widespread. But crafty thieves are even targeting churches. David Parkinson works with the risk management team at Ecclesiastical Insurance.

[David Parkinson]

We've probably had around 100 claims in around metal theft in churches. We've been working with customers over a period to help them to improve security. So roof alarm, cctv, increasing the, you know, the surveillance around the church and obviously work that's done by other organisations like the police, has all helped to address the problem. To be honest, it hasn't gone away. I don't think it will go away.

[Russell Padmore]

I wonder what kind of items are being stolen from a church. Could it be statues made of a certain metal? Or even the lead on the roof?

[David Parkinson]

Lead sheet, copper, roof coverings, stainless steel coverings are all obvious targets. Even, you know, copper lightning conductors, they are being stolen and obviously it's not just the metal, it's damage to the historic fabric that they cause. In the process of removing that material, we've even had church bells stolen.

[Russell Padmore]

Across the world, police are investigating the theft of copper from data centers, building sites, electricity networks and farms. Sergeant Luke Halverson is with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Alberta.

[Alex Menard]

These thefts can render equipment, infrastructure and entire sites inoperable, which threatens the livelihood of workers, landowners, farmers and the viability of businesses of all sizes.

[Russell Padmore]

In Australia, law enforcement is warning scrapyards not to buy stolen metal. Detective Superintendent Guy Magee is a police officer in New South Wales. We have our eye on a number of you. I would encourage you to do your due diligence before receiving copper or water meters, particularly from people who aren't tradespeople. Thieves who are stealing commodities like copper need somewhere to sell it. And that's probably a junkyard or scrapyard, a dealer in used metal, a recycling facility. It's a sunny afternoon, but a cold day here in the north west of Ireland. I'm in County Donegal on the outskirts of Letterkenny, in an industrial area. I've come to lst a company that recycles metal to find out what legal safeguards are in place to deter thieves and prevent recycling operations. Buying copper or other metals which might have been stolen. Paddy McDade's family have run the business here for about 40 years, we'd have different customer base.

[Paddy McDade]

Like your builders generally would be generating scrap metal from their sites and maybe demolition jobs and renovation jobs and then you'd have farmers.

[Russell Padmore]

That seems unusual. How would a farmer generate scrap metal?

[Paddy McDade]

Maybe if he had like old machinery there that was kind of not been used much and maybe gone, you know, to bad state of repair, he might say, listen, I'll cash that in and put a bit of that money towards buying a new updated version of it.

[Russell Padmore]

Thieves across the world have cottoned onto the fact that the price of metals, particularly copper, has risen significantly. If you can get your hands on it, you can sell it, you can make a big profit. But I wonder what kind of safeguards are in place to prevent criminals bringing the stolen metals, particularly here to your facility.

[Paddy McDade]

Generally a lot of our people are repeat customs, so we generally know them. But first thing we do is we take their id, verify that, then we set them up on our computer system with their name, address the raids of their vehicle. Then we go through the material they have, weigh it. So then we've got a log of basically all they've brought in, what date they brought it in, the vehicle they were driving. And generally you have to take people at their word that it's their material as well. But you have it all in detail. If there's ever a problem down the line.

[Russell Padmore]

Do you think the lower authorities are on top of this problem?

[Paddy McDade]

They're definitely more on top of it than they used to be. Like the local authorities here now brought in the legislation that you have to have the ad and you have to have the vehicle rage. So I think they're doing all they can do to tighten up all loose ends. They can. We always have a database there of who's brought in what and when they brought it in. So if there's any problem, you have it there.

[Russell Padmore]

It's thought a lot of the stolen copper in particular ends up in China. Now let's be honest, there are many factories in China which would need the commodity. Is that inside your knowledge?

[Paddy McDade]

Probably go wherever is paying the most for it, obviously. So China does a lot of the materials do go there, so I assume probably wherever they can get the most money for it.

[Russell Padmore]

Do you think there's ever going to be an end to this crime or is it just going to rise and fall, ebb and flow as the price.

[Paddy McDade]

Goes up and down, there's going to be crime everywhere. And copper and them commodities, non ferrous commodities are as high as they are. It is very lucrative for them people to be going down that avenue of theft.

[Russell Padmore]

You would be well aware that thieves are managing to sell commodities like copper somewhere. Does that kind of make you a bit annoyed? You're running a very clean, above board business. Some others are not.

[Paddy McDade]

Yeah, I suppose. Listen, but that's life. Like there's always going to be people that's going to take shortcuts and you just have to look after your own business and try and proceed and invest and proceed as best you can.

[Russell Padmore]

The surge in copper prices has led to a big increase in incidence of theft of the metal. And across the world that's to going costing industries like energy, telecoms, railways and construction billions every year. If stealing copper continues to be lucrative, then pressure on law enforcement authorities to prevent the crime as well as catch the thieves will intensify because economies are suffering huge losses. Thanks for listening. I'm Russell Patmore, closing this edition of Business Daily.

[Alex Menard]

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