Copper prices will not suffer significantly from a moderate global surplus next year, the chief executive officer of the world’s No. 1 producer of the metal told Reuters on Tuesday.

“We’re expecting that we’ll surely have a small metal surplus, but at relatively modest levels,” Thomas Keller, CEO of Chile’s Codelco, said at the Ministro Hales mine project near the city of Calama in the nation’s mineral-rich north.

World demand for the red metal has exceeded supply since the global financial crisis, but increased output from new and existing mines has been expected to reverse that trend from 2013.

Analysts expect the global copper market to post a surplus of 182,000 tonnes this year, up from a previous forecast of 153,000 tonnes, and then balloon to 328,000 tonnes in 2014, according to a Reuters poll last month.

Copper has traded at $7,000 to $7,420 a tonne since early August, held back by swelling supply and slower demand growth in China.

“Prices are moving in a range that is to be expected given the market conditions,” Keller said.

Codelco is in the midst of an ambitious investment plan to boost output in its massive but tired mines. The company’s production in 2012 fell to its lowest since 2008, although it was more stable in the first half of this year.

Keller has said Codelco expects output for 2013 as a whole to come in slightly ahead of last year, when it produced roughly 1.65 million tonnes, excluding the El Abra and Anglo American Sur operations.