Concentrate TC/RC and How a Cargo Settles
Treatment and refining charges are what the miner pays the smelter, deducted from the value of the concentrate. Everything on this page is one arithmetic chain: wet tonnes in at one end, dollars out at the other. The worked example runs on the same code as the calculator, so the two cannot drift apart.
The six words that do the work
Charged per dry metric tonne of concentrate, in USD/DMT. Pays for turning concentrate into blister.
Charged per pound of payable metal, in US cents/lb. Blister to cathode. Lead and zinc have no RC.
Concentrate lands wet; moisture comes off before anything is priced. One point of moisture on a 1,000-tonne cargo is ten tonnes.
The smelter cannot recover 100%, so the contract deducts units straight off the grade. Copper typically one unit; zinc far more.
Above an agreed copper price, miner and smelter split the upside. Rare in recent benchmarks but still turns up in older contracts.
By-product gold and silver are paid on a recovery rate above a threshold grade, less their own refining charges.
A cargo, from wet tonnes to dollars
1,000 WMT of 25% copper concentrate at 10% moisture, LME $14,105/t, TC $10/DMT, RC 1¢/lb. Gold and silver credits left out to keep the chain visible.
| Step | Arithmetic | Result | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wet tonnes less moisture → DMT | 1,000 WMT × (1 − 10%) | 900 DMT |
| 2 | Grade less deduction → payable grade | 25% − 1 unit | 24% |
| 3 | Payable metal | 900 DMT × 24% | 216 t Cu |
| 4 | Gross metal value | 216 t × $14,105/t | $3,046,680 |
| 5 | Less TC (per DMT) | 900 DMT × $10 | − $9,000 |
| 6 | Less RC (per payable pound) | 216 t × 2204.623 lb × 1¢ | − $4,762 |
| Net payable to the miner | $3,032,918 |
TC and RC together take $13,762 out of $3,046,680 of contained value — about 0.5% at this level of charges. At the 2016 benchmark the same cargo would have lost roughly 4.4%.
Ten years of annual benchmark
The annual copper concentrate benchmark negotiated between a major miner and the Chinese smelters, which the rest of the market prices off. Compiled from public reporting — not our own collected data. Your contract is what your contract says.
| Year | TC $/DMT | RC ¢/lb | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 97.35 | 9.735 | |
| 2017 | 92.50 | 9.250 | |
| 2018 | 82.25 | 8.225 | |
| 2019 | 80.80 | 8.080 | |
| 2020 | 62.00 | 6.200 | |
| 2021 | 59.50 | 5.950 | |
| 2022 | 65.00 | 6.500 | |
| 2023 | 88.00 | 8.800 | |
| 2024 | 80.00 | 8.000 | |
| 2025 | 21.25 | 2.125 |
TC/RC moves inversely to how tight concentrate supply is. High charges mean mines are competing for smelter capacity; the collapse to 21.25 in 2025 — under a quarter of the 2016 level — is the direct reading of the opposite: too much smelting capacity chasing too little ore. It is the cleanest single indicator of that balance that the market publishes.
We deliberately stop at 2025. Later benchmarks are not listed until we have verified them — the same rule that governs the tariff column on our HS code pages.
Copper, zinc and lead settle differently
| Concentrate | Typical grade | Grade deduction | RC |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copper Concentrate | 25% Cu | 1.0 units | Yes, ¢/lb |
| Zinc Concentrate | 50% Zn | 8.0 units | None — TC only |
| Lead Concentrate | 60% Pb | 3.0 units | None — TC only |
The zinc deduction is the one that catches people out: eight units off a 50% concentrate is a sixth of the contained metal, gone before any charge is applied. Zinc contracts also often carry an escalator that shares the metal price above a floor, which changes the effective TC as the price moves.