BT Cashes In On £2bn Copper Windfall Amid AI Market Frenzy

BT Group is set to reap an estimated £2bn windfall from selling old copper cabling over the next decade, thanks to soaring prices driven by the AI market frenzy. The telecoms company has a recycling deal with EMR, which paid BT £99m upfront for thousands of tonnes of surplus stripped copper.

This is the second payment received by BT, following an initial £105m in 2024. The forward sale agreements cover the delivery of about 20,000 tonnes of copper over a four-year period each. This amount could be valued at £2bn-plus at current market prices.

BT recovered a record nearly 10,000 tonnes in the year to the end of March, almost three times the amount it managed in the year to the end of March 2024. The average price for copper has risen from about $8,500 a tonne in 2023 to a high of $14,294 a metric tonne on Friday.

Copper prices have been driven by the 'electrification of everything', with essential demand coming from AI datacentres, electronics, and renewable energy. BT's Openreach subsidiary is rolling out full-fibre broadband to 30m homes by the end of the decade.