Bloomberg cited Mr Terry Burgess CEO of OZ Minerals Limited of Australia as saying that about the outlook for the metal's prices and demand. Burgess also discusses the company's growth strategy.

Copper supply shortages, which have been driven by operational problems and labor strikes in South America and Indonesia, are likely to persist next year.

Mr Terry Burgess said that “A shortfall in 2011 is certainly something that wasn’t expected at the beginning of the year and you’re going to see this shortfall flowing to 2012 as well. I see strength in the copper price as China and India continue to urbanize. We’re not seeing any major new projects coming in until maybe 2014 and 2015 with Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia.”

He said that there are operational problems on mines and in particular we’ve seen a lot of strikes in South America, and most recently Grasberg in Indonesia and as a result of that there’s this shortage of copper in general in the market.

He added that obviously the volatility that we’re seeing in recent times is more dependent on the global economy, particularly with what’s happening in Europe and I think that volatility is spreading over to the other commodity prices.

(Sourced from Bloomberg.net)