The importance of metal towards an understanding of the international Beaker culture is well established, whether as a driver of trade connections and other forms of exchange, or as a material expression of ethnicity, ideology or social relations. While copper and gold were used in earlier times in Europe, Beaker groups can be associated with a spread of metallurgical knowledge across the Atlantic zone during the later third millennium BC. This paper will consider long-distance networks of metal production and supply in relation to the mobility of the Beaker culture. The nature of those connections will be explored, whether they involved migration of ethnic groups or the small-scale movement of specialists, their ideas and material culture, through trade and other forms of exchange. The implications for genetic and language origins will be considered, with a focus on connections between Iberia, France and Ireland in that period.