Metals Traders Are Enjoying Their Most Profitable Year on Record

(Bloomberg) — The world’s metal traders are enjoying their most profitable ever year, after a series of supply upheavals propelled prices toward record highs and drove huge shifts in metal moving across the globe.

Glencore Plc and Trafigura Group, which have long competed as the two largest players, are both on track for their best year for metal trading, according to people familiar with the matter. IXM, the third-largest metals trader, has already surpassed last year’s profit and will report its third consecutive record year, according to Chief Executive Officer Kenny Ives.

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“There have been some phenomenal opportunities this year,” Ives said at an event at Bloomberg’s London office this week. “It has been a great time to be a base metal trader in 2025. You rarely see years like 2025.”

The boom vindicates a recent push into metals by several of the world’s largest energy traders, betting that the markets would benefit from rising demand in a sector regarded by governments as increasingly strategic. Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., which expanded most aggressively, has made around $300 million in trading profits so far this year, Bloomberg reported last week.

The surge in earnings is happening at a time when trading margins for other commodities like gas, oil and grains are under pressure. For metals traders, it represents a welcome shift after a period of lackluster demand and choppy prices that crimped profits.

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Still, not all of the new entrants have fully capitalized. Mercuria’s energy-trading rivals Vitol Group and Gunvor Group, which have been more cautious in their expansion, have made only modest profits from metals this year, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the figures are private.

Gunvor CEO Torbjorn Tornqvist said in an interview that the company was making money in metals, but that its profits were “not that big as we hear from others.” A Vitol spokesperson declined to comment.

Among the larger players, profits have been driven by a series of supply squeezes and upheavals.

US President Donald Trump created a huge arbitrage opportunity by threatening, but not imposing, import tariffs on refined copper. That drove US copper prices to an unprecedented premium over global benchmarks, allowing traders to make near-guaranteed profits by shipping physical metal to the US.

Prices for mined ore, known as concentrates, have soared for copper, lead and zinc amid an expansion in smelting capacity and limited new supplies, benefiting traders who typically have long-term contracts.

And surging gold and silver prices have also proved a lucrative profit opportunity for traders who often have exposure to them as byproducts of base metals — prompting some trading houses to set up dedicated precious metals teams.

Glencore, which reported a record half year for its metal traders in the first six months of 2025, with adjusted earnings before interest and tax of $1.57 billion, has continued at a similar rate in the second half, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Trafigura’s non-ferrous metals traders notched up record profits in its financial year that ended in September, a person familiar with the matter said.

Among the energy traders seeking to expand in metals, Vitol has made money, but was wrongfooted when Trump surprised the market by exempting refined copper imports from tariffs in July, according to several of the people. Gunvor’s Tornqvist said that as the company was building a metals book “from scratch,” he had to accept that “it takes a bit of time.”

“It’s also a highly competitive market and we haven’t been moving as fast as some of our competitors have,” he said. “We just want to have taken a bit of a balanced approach. Some others want to go more aggressive.”

The boom has created a hot market for metals trading talent. Mercuria alone has built up a team of roughly 150 in a little over a year. And more new entrants are hiring teams, from oil firm BGN Group to Aramco Trading, the trading arm of Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant.

Smaller trading houses are increasingly being approached with buy-out offers. Brent Omland, CEO of specialist metals firm Ocean Partners Holdings, said he’d fielded lots of calls from potential buyers over the years and also recently, though he and his partners are “in no rush to sell.”

“We can’t deny we’re having a very strong year,” Omland said in an interview. “If you had stomached the difficult years of 2023 and even parts of 2024 in copper, this has been a pretty excellent market for trading.”

–With assistance from Mark Burton.

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