Ivanhoe Electric is in advanced talks to sell copper from its Santa Cruz project in Arizona, as US buyers compete harder for domestic supply to power data centers and electrical grids. The Northern Miner reported on October 19, 2026 that chief executive Taylor Melvin said the company is fielding interest from commodity trading houses and strategic partners who want copper produced on US soil.
- Ivanhoe Electric (NYSE-A, TSX: IE) is in advanced negotiations to sell copper from its Santa Cruz project near Casa Grande, Arizona.
- CEO Taylor Melvin says interest is coming from traditional trading houses and strategic partners seeking US-produced copper, and some potential deals could fold in project financing.
- No buyer has been named and no agreement has been signed; the talks are ongoing.
- Santa Cruz is still in development, with first production targeted for 2029 and about $1.4 billion in first-phase costs.
- The project already holds an Export-Import Bank Preliminary Project Letter for up to $1.1 billion in potential debt financing, announced in August 2026.
Who wants to buy Santa Cruz copper?
Melvin did not name the companies at the table, but he described two kinds of interested buyers: traditional commodity trading houses that move metal through established supply chains, and strategic partners looking to lock in US-produced copper for their own operations. Some of those conversations reportedly extend beyond a simple purchase agreement into financing arrangements that could help fund construction, a structure increasingly common on critical mineral projects where buyers want certainty of supply as much as sellers want certainty of a customer. Melvin’s comment to reporters, that Santa Cruz alone will not close the country’s copper gap, underscores how far current domestic output sits from what buyers are chasing.
Why is copper demand surging right now?
The driver is the same one reshaping electricity markets nationwide: artificial intelligence data centers and the power grid upgrades needed to feed them. Copper wires everything from server racks to substation transformers, and Arizona already supplies roughly 70 percent of the nation’s mined copper, mostly from Freeport-McMoRan’s Morenci complex. Electric vehicles and renewable power projects add further pull on the same metal, which is why copper sits at the center of the mine-to-product story Mining Our Future tracks across the country.
How does this tie into Ivanhoe’s financing push?
The offtake talks arrive alongside Ivanhoe Electric’s separate effort to finance Santa Cruz’s construction. In August 2026, the company announced that the Export-Import Bank of the United States had issued a Preliminary Project Letter indicating it could lend up to $1.1 billion toward the project, up from an earlier $825 million estimate. That letter followed an August 7, 2026 mining roundtable at the State Department, where President Trump publicly backed Santa Cruz as part of a broader push that included more than $2 billion in critical minerals financing commitments. Ivanhoe Electric is also negotiating with commercial banks for additional project debt, on top of the potential EXIM support.
What is still ahead for Santa Cruz?
Plenty. Neither the offtake talks nor the EXIM financing has closed, and Melvin has not set a timeline for when buyers might be named. The mine plan calls for an underground operation using heap leach and solvent extraction and electrowinning to produce copper cathode on site, skipping a traditional smelter, with first production still targeted for 2029. Until financing and sales agreements are final, Santa Cruz remains a project under construction on paper, not yet a new node in Arizona’s copper supply. Freeport-McMoRan’s Morenci mine, the anchor of the Mining Our Future tour’s Arizona stop, remains the state’s dominant copper producer while Santa Cruz works through that process.