Solar Supply Chain: Where Gilgit-Baltistan Fits on Silver, Copper and Tellurium

A single 550W TOPCon module uses roughly 12 grams of silver. Multiply that by the 650 GW of PV the industry is expected to ship this year, and you're looking at silver demand from solar alone pushing past 200 million ounces — about a quarter of global mine supply. That's the number that keeps coming up in every call I've had with buyers out of Shenzhen and Jiangsu this year.

And it's the reason I'm writing this. Buyers who used to only ask about gold and copper are now asking, very specifically, about silver by-product credits, tellurium recovery from copper anode slimes, and whether Pakistan can be a serious secondary source outside the China–Latin America axis.

So let me be honest about what Gilgit-Baltistan can actually offer the solar supply chain. And what it can't.

Silver: the number the PV industry is genuinely worried about

Silver paste is the bit that keeps solar CTOs up at night. TOPCon uses more than PERC. Heterojunction uses more still — around 20g per cell before recent thrifting. The industry has been reducing loadings every year for a decade, but volume growth is outrunning the thrifting curve. That's the honest picture.

Where does GB fit? Our silver isn't a primary silver play — I want to be upfront about that. We don't have a Fresnillo or a Cannington sitting in the Karakoram. What we do have is silver as a credit in polymetallic lead-zinc systems and in the sulphide envelopes around our copper concessions. Two of our 16 blocks return silver values in the 40–120 g/t range from grab and channel sampling over lead-silver galena veins, with one narrow zone in the Chilas–Astore corridor hitting 380 g/t across 0.9 metres. That's not a mine plan. It's an indicator that the district hosts credible silver, and that a proper JV with drilling behind it could define resources that matter as by-product ounces.

Here's the thing about silver solar demand — buyers don't need us to be the next Peru. They need diversified tonnes of concentrate where silver pays a meaningful part of the smelter return. That's a realistic conversation to have.

Copper is where the real story is

Every gigawatt of utility solar needs roughly 4,000–5,000 tonnes of copper. Cabling, inverters, transformers, the DC and AC side both. Add the grid build-out required to actually connect the panels and copper demand from the PV supply chain alone runs into millions of tonnes a decade.

GB sits on the western extension of the same Kohistan-Ladakh island arc that hosts porphyry systems on the Indian side. Our copper concessions — I won't name blocks publicly here, but I'm happy to on a signed NDA — show classic porphyry and skarn signatures. Surface grades on our two most-worked blocks are running 0.38% to 1.2% Cu with associated molybdenum (which is itself a critical mineral for high-strength steel used in solar tracker structures and inverter housings). One skarn zone at the eastern end of our portfolio has returned 2.1% Cu with 18 g/t silver over trench widths of 3–6 metres.

We're not pretending these are drilled resources yet. They're not. What they are is a serious exploration pipeline in a jurisdiction that hasn't been systematically explored with modern methods. For a Chinese or Gulf partner willing to fund drilling, the entry cost per prospective hectare is a fraction of what it costs in Chile or Zambia today.

Tellurium — the one everyone forgets until they can't buy any

Tellurium is the awkward one. First Solar's entire CdTe thin-film business runs on it, and global primary production is barely 600 tonnes a year. Almost all of it comes as a by-product of copper electrorefining — specifically from the anode slimes at copper refineries. No copper smelter, no tellurium.

Pakistan doesn't currently have a copper smelter of scale. Reko Diq will change that eventually, but that's a decade out for refined output. What GB can contribute is copper concentrate feedstock that, if processed at a partner's refinery in China or the Gulf, contributes to the tellurium recovery stream. Our early XRF work on sulphide samples from two blocks shows tellurium in the 8–35 ppm range in chalcopyrite-rich zones. That's not a headline grade, but it's within the range that matters when you're recovering tellurium at the refinery back-end.

Honestly, I got this wrong at first. I used to talk about tellurium as if we could sell it separately. You can't, really — not at our stage. The value is in being a concentrate supplier whose material carries the right trace-element profile for buyers who care about downstream by-product credits. First Solar and its supply chain do care. So do the Chinese CdTe entrants.

What a serious PV mineral supply conversation looks like

If you're a buyer or a strategic investor reading this, here's what I'd say plainly:

We're not offering a producing mine. We're offering 16 concessions, held under Gilgit-Baltistan's mineral rules, in a belt with real geology, at an entry point that's a fraction of Latin American or African comparables. Trucking to Karachi port runs 1,800 km on the Karakoram Highway and the N-5 — it's a real logistics line, not a theoretical one, and China is 800 km closer via Khunjerab if the Sost dry port route is used for concentrate.

The solar supply chain needs new tonnes from new places. Not because the existing suppliers are failing, but because concentration risk is now a boardroom issue for every PV manufacturer and every Western utility procuring modules. Silver, copper, tellurium — the three metals I've talked about here — all sit inside that risk conversation.

If that's a conversation your team is actually having, then GB is worth an afternoon of your time. Come see the ground. Bring your own geologist. I'd rather you kick the outcrop yourself than take my word for any of the numbers above.

What's the grade cutoff your off-take team is currently working to on copper concentrate with silver and tellurium credits? That's the question I'd want to answer next.