LONDON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Will COVID-19 kick-start a new commodities supercycle? Goldman Sachs thinks so.

While last year’s strong rebound in many commodity prices might be viewed as a “V-shaped vaccine recovery”, the bank contends it is just “the beginning of a much longer structural bull market for commodities”.

“Looking at the 2020s, we believe that similar structural forces to those which drove commodities in the 2000s could be at play,” Goldman argues. (“2021 Commodities Outlook: REVing up a structural bull market”, Nov. 18, 2020)

The 2000s were transformative for metal prices, which experienced a tectonic demand boost from industrialisation and urbanisation in emerging nations, China in particular.

Copper, the bellwether of the industrial metals sector, rose from under $2,000 per tonne in 2000 to a record high of $10,190 in February 2011.

But the supercycle hype dissipated over the course of a four-year bear market which only troughed late in 2015, leaving many investors disillusioned with the sector.

No-one has talked much about a commodities supercycle since then, which makes Goldman’s call all the more remarkable.

So what’s a supercycle, why was the last one so short-lived and what makes one of Wall Street’s finest think another one is coming?