From the stock exchange to the copper business – my start at SÜDKUPFER

When I came across the job advertised by SÜDKUPFER on LinkedIn, I was immediately intrigued: The combination of exchange trading and physical business sounded like exactly the mix I had been looking for. Perhaps that was partly due to my family’s background in agriculture, as commodities are often hedged via stock exchange transactions in the agricultural sector too. So, the topic of hedging was not entirely foreign to me – but it was completely new in this dimension.

And how did it start? Long story short: intensive, exciting and instructive. I was introduced step by step to the various systems and processes of our day-to-day business. In the beginning, of course, I was hardly confronted with a lot of new information. But over time, everything fell into place like a jigsaw puzzle and the processes have become more transparent and tangible.

My job at SÜDKUPFER is to handle the hedging of our customers’ copper purchases via our trading partners (brokers and banks). It works like this: a customer contacts us and places an order – in most cases this is done by phone, sometimes also by e-mail. For customers who prefer a more digital approach: orders can also be placed directly online via our innovative customer portal – quickly, easily and 24/7.

Once we receive an order via these options, we immediately hedge the price of this (physical) transaction at the London Metal Exchange (LME) by buying forwards. We are in permanent contact with our trading partners via special chat channels, by phone as well as on trading platforms. The price of these forwards is based on the current copper price at different dates. In this manner the pricing risk of our customer is perfectly managed.

In the beginning it was not easy to keep track on the wide range of hedging positions – but day by day it became more confident and faster.

At the beginning of April, Donald Trump announced his so-called ‘Liberation Day’, which led to a dramatic drop in the price of copper – within a few days, the price fell by a whopping €1,600 per ton. For many of our customers, this was the perfect opportunity to stock up at a favorable price. For us at SÜDKUPFER, that caused continuous stress.

The phone rang permanently. We took order for order, put the numbers into the system, secured prices – non-stop. For several days, there was a level of activity that I had never experienced before. The figures at the end of the week were record-breaking: we traded more copper in April than ever before in the history of SÜDKUPFER. Shortly after my colleagues said with a smile: ‘Welcome to the team – that was your baptism of fire.’ I could barely agree with them. It was a challenge, but even incredibly instructive – and it showed how dynamic and exciting the copper market can be.