It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The initial public offering of Nigeria’s Dangote refinery, the largest on the continent, will open in the next 10 to 12 days, owner Aliko Dangote said on Thursday.
“So our dream is that we want to make sure we double the capacity of the refinery … which will take us to 1.4 million barrels per day. The IPO will open in the next 10 to 12 days,” Dangote told investors and analysts in Botswana, while visiting the Southern African country.
The refinery, owned by Africa’s richest man, is expected to seek to raise about $5 billion in what could become the continent’s largest IPO.
Dangote does not disclose refinery margins, but the refining industry has benefited from stronger profits as turmoil in the Middle East boosted demand for alternative fuel supplies.
The 650,000-barrel-per-day refinery reached full nameplate capacity in February and has already tested output at 700,000 barrels per day.
The businessman also said the secondary listing of Dangote Cement (NGX: DANGCEM), another flagship company in his industrial empire, on the London Stock Exchange would most likely be in October, a move that could broaden its access to international investors and capital.
Dangote is also planning to build a new refinery on Kenya’s coast in partnership with East African governments. The project, which is expected to take up to three years to complete, would supply refined petroleum products to Kenya and neighbouring countries, helping reduce East Africa’s reliance on imported fuels.
It would mark Dangote Group’s biggest refining investment outside Nigeria. “We are launching it on September 30,” he said.
(Reporting by Sfundo Parakozov and Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by David Gregorio)
African Rainbow Minerals profit up 19% on higher platinum prices
African Rainbow Minerals (JSE: ARI) on Friday posted a 19% increase in annual profit, as strong platinum group metal prices offset the impact of lower income from its coal, iron ore and manganese divisions.
The diversified South African miner’s headline earnings came in at 3.201 billion rand ($200.3 million) in the year ended June 30, compared with 2.695 billion rand previously.
ARM said it will pay a final dividend of 7 rand per share, up from 6 rand per share last year.
The company’s PGM operations swung back to profit with 1.345 billion rand in headline earnings against last year’s 1.288 billion rand loss, after metal prices rose by more than 50% compared to the previous year.
Its ferrous division, which consists of iron ore and manganese, reported a 42% decline in headline earnings to 2.028 billion rand.
Iron ore earnings hit by mothballing of mine
Income from the iron ore division was impacted by a 75% collapse in sales volumes at the Beeshoek Mine, which was mothballed last November.
Headline earnings at ARM’s other iron ore mine, Khumani, also decreased significantly due to a stronger rand, despite higher export volumes. Manganese income was also hurt by lower mineral prices and the stronger rand.
The coal unit made a 428 million rand loss, against last year’s 47 million rand profit, mainly due to lower prices.
ARM said in July it was undertaking a phased 15.2 billion rand upgrade of its Bokoni platinum operations, as well as a resumption of nickel mining at Nkomati.
The Bokoni project is expected to reach its peak in 2032, producing between 350,000 and 400,000 ounces of PGMs annually, doubling ARM’s current output.
ARM is restarting open-pit mining operations and nickel concentrate production at Nkomati, which was idled in 2021. Nkomati will produce 56,065 tons annually after agreeing an off-take deal with Sweden’s Boliden BOL.ST .
($1 = 15.9803 rand)
(Reporting by Nelson Banya; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Jan Harvey)
Baowu eyes stake in BHP’s massive Jimblebar iron ore mine
Jimblebar produced roughly a quarter of BHP’s iron ore in fiscal 2026,.(Image courtesy of BHP.)
China Baowu Steel Group is considering buying a minority stake in BHP’s (NYSE: BHP) Jimblebar iron ore mine in Western Australia, a move that could deepen Chinese involvement in one of the miner’s biggest operations, two sources told Reuters.
The world’s largest steelmaker is weighing a 15% to 25% interest that would come directly from BHP’s holding, according to the report. Jimblebar produced about 62.5 million tonnes of iron ore in fiscal 2026, roughly a quarter of BHP’s iron ore output.
BHP owns 85% of Jimblebar, while Japanese trading houses Itochu and Mitsui hold minority interests. The mine, valued at about $3.2 billion when it opened in 2014, produces ore worth roughly $6.2 billion at current prices.
Baowu has expressed interest but has not made a decision, and there is no certainty that talks will result in a transaction, Reuters reported.
A deal would give the Chinese steel giant a direct interest in a major source of the raw material used to make steel for construction, automobiles and other industries, while potentially strengthening commercial ties between one of Australia’s largest miners and its biggest customer market.
Trade ties
Chinese investment in Australia has faced greater scrutiny in recent years as Canberra tightened its approach to transactions involving strategically important resources, including lithium and rare earths.
The potential investment also comes after BHP and China Mineral Resources Group resolved a six-month dispute in April, clearing the way for Chinese steel mills to resume purchases of some BHP iron ore cargoes that had been blacklisted.
BHP and Baowu already have ties in efforts to reduce emissions from steelmaking. The companies conducted commercial-scale trials using BHP’s Pilbara iron ores for direct reduced iron production at a Baowu facility, with the material deemed suitable for the process.
Baowu has also previously partnered with Australian miners. In 2022, it struck a deal with Rio Tinto to develop an iron ore project in Western Australia.
Strategic supply
An investment in Jimblebar would give Baowu greater exposure to Australian iron ore at a time when China remains central to global steel demand and Australian producers depend heavily on the country as an export market.
For BHP, selling part of its Jimblebar holding could bring a major customer directly into the ownership structure while leaving the miner with control of the operation. For Baowu, a stake could provide closer access to the raw material feeding its production of steel sheet, coils, bars and rods.
Any transaction, however, would come against the backdrop of Australia’s increased scrutiny of Chinese investment in critical and strategic resources, potentially adding a regulatory dimension to negotiations.
Silver sentiment has sure felt pretty apathetic to bearish recently, with traders wanting little to do with it. That’s understandable after silver was more than cut in half earlier this year. Yet despite that perception, silver is showing much unsung strength. It weathered a dangerous post-parabola collapse relatively well, and remains quite high compared to its own history and its primary driver gold. Such resiliency is bullish.
In late January, silver skyrocketed with gold to an all-time high near $116 per ounce. That climaxed a spectacular bull run with 455.2% gains over 27.8 months! Overall that really outperformed gold’s parallel monster record cyclical bull, amplifying its gains by 2.3x. But silver’s performance sure wasn’t uniform, lagging gold early on before shooting parabolic near the end to catch up. That terminal moonshot was wild.
In just 3.1 months into late January’s peak, silver catapulted an incredible 149.0% higher! As I warned in mid-January about a week before silver’s climax, that was a dangerous extreme parabola. Decades of studying market history has led me to define those as doublings within two-to-three months following massive bull runs. And such one-sided popular-speculative-mania greed-fueled moves always end badly.
I used the infamous example from January 1980 in that essay. Way back then silver skyrocketed a truly-astounding 196.1% in just 2.0 months into that insane peak! Those levels wouldn’t be seen again until a staggering 31.3 years later in April 2011! By March 1980 just 2.2 months after that climax, silver crashed a soul-crushing 76.9%! So I concluded that mid-January-2026 essay on silver’s parabola with sober warnings.
“Vertical moonshots are super-risky, nothing to be trifled with. … Traders should avoid chasing silver’s popular-speculative-mania gains, and gird for an imminent big-and-fast selloff.” A bit over a week later, silver would stretch an eye-popping 144.3% above its key 200-day-moving-average baseline! That proved a terrifying 46.0-year high in overboughtness, silver’s most extreme witnessed since January 1980!
So after such a hyper-risky parabolic moonshot, silver was absolutely due for a symmetrical collapse like after similar past blowoffs. Indeed it arrived swiftly with brutal violence. Right out of late January’s peak, silver crashed a gut-wrenching 27.5% in a single trading day! That was its second-worst daily crash ever extending all the way back to 1971! I wrote another essay in mid-February analyzing its dire implications.
The aftermath of January 2026’s wildest extremes in nearly a half-century sure could’ve been way worse. Silver could’ve again collapsed 75%+ in its necessary
post-parabola reckoning. For reference a 3/4ths loss would’ve sledgehammered silver all the way back near $29! Yet at worst in mid-July, silver ‘merely’ fell 52.3% over 5.6 months bottoming above $55. Considering that situation, silver actually proved fairly resilient.
While getting cut in half is a serious, massive selloff absolutely, that’s up near best-case-scenario territory following an extreme parabola. At mid-July’s post-parabola low, silver was down 21.9% year-to-date which certainly contributed to recent bearish herd sentiment. Yet that perspective is myopic, distorted by the post-parabola reckoning. Very impressively at that recent low, silver was actually still up 46.7% year-over-year!
Despite all the savage carnage in silver in the half-year into mid-July, it has still averaged nearly $74 so far in 2026. That’s a phenomenal 116.7% higher than 2025’s comparable YTD period into early September! So it’s surprising if not perplexing to hear traders and analysts increasing bagging on silver recently. Are their perspectives so narrow-minded they don’t see silver weathering a post-parabola bust with flying colors?
Being in the financial-newsletter business for over a quarter-century now, I am blessed to receive lots of feedback from subscribers. That offers a unique window into prevailing sentiment. I can’t remember a single e-mail in recent months that was bullish on silver! Everyone who bothered writing on silver was generally disappointed it had collapsed this year and expected those outsized losses to continue mounting.
Several weeks ago I was interviewed on a podcast, and after a long discussion on gold the host asked me why silver is performing so poorly. Despite seeing the bearish sentiment, I was kind of taken aback by that question. I responded saying I thought silver was faring really well this year, showing impressive resilience relative to gold. That shocked the host, who moved on because clearly I knew nothing about silver!
Maintaining perspective is everything in the markets, because we humans all have the natural tendency to extrapolate the latest moves we’ve seen out into infinity. Psychologists have studied this in great depth giving it different names including recency bias, availability heuristic, and hyperbolic discounting. It is a huge problem for traders, as overweighting the present emotionally greatly impairs buying low and selling high.
Letting a few days, weeks, or even months of the latest price action fully inform your trading outlook is insufficient. The minimum-necessary perspective is to consider all recent moves within the past half-year of context. But not long after silver’s extreme parabolic-spike anomaly, it’s necessary to extend that essential framing perspective well beyond that to the last few years or so. This hybrid silver chart suffices.
It includes standard silver technicals, but overlaid on the silver/gold ratio. Gold is silver’s dominant primary driver, with gold’s recent price action overwhelmingly fueling prevailing silver sentiment and thus trading. But rather than use the actual SGR in this chart which is a hard-to-parse decimal like the 0.015x midweek, the identical gold/silver ratio with an inverted axis is much easier to understand running 67.3x Wednesday.
Had silver just cratered by half in six months after a normal bull run, it would be catastrophic. But after shooting parabolic rocketing up 149.0% in just 3.1 months to its most-overbought levels since January 1980, getting cut in half is quite resilient. Post-parabola losses out of nearly-half-century extremes could have again cratered 3/4ths+! Silver’s unsung strength in recent months is really underappreciated by traders.
In July surrounding that post-parabola bottoming, silver averaged a bit over $58. That was still 55.0% above the comparable July-2025 average! Had you told traders anytime last year silver would be up at recent levels, they would’ve beenecstatic. Silver’s performance this year only feels weak if myopically considered just from late January’s parabolic climax. Yet its crazy extremes never had any chance to be sustainable.
Even during that inevitable and necessary post-parabola collapse since, silver has carved a massive bullish falling-wedge chart pattern just like gold’s parallel one. Those tend to resolve in strong upside breakouts, which indeed happened in gold, its miners’ stocks, and silver. Silver’s decisive breakout portends much-bigger gains likely in coming months. So did the depth of its post-parabola bottoming in mid-July.
Again a bit over $55, silver had plunged to just 79.7% of that baseline 200dma. That proved a 3.9-year low, the most oversold silver had been since September 2022 over a year before its late monster bull got underway! Silver’s huge 52.5% selloff over 5.6 months had eradicated all the hyperbolic herd greed into that parabolic climax, resetting the technical and sentimental stages paving the way for another big bull run.
Yet silver’s unsung strength in recent months is most apparent in the silver/gold ratio, which isn’t widely followed. You want to talk about weak silver? From January 2020 to September 2023 just before silver’s late bull got underway, the SGR averaged just 81.7x. In other words, it took 81.7 ounces of silver to equal the value of one ounce of gold. That was very poor historically, with longer-term averages around 55x to 60x.
From October 2023 to October 2025 during silver’s late bull before its final three parabolic months into late January 2026, the SGR was even worse averaging 87.3x! As the SGR line on this chart shows, silver seriously lagged gold’s monster record bull for the great majority of its duration. Back then silver was performing so dismally that I rarely bothered writing about it. Silver remained the precious-metals pariah.
The three months into silver’s parabolic peak and symmetrical three months after was again an extreme anomaly, like nothing witnessed in nearly a half-century. So SGR reads in that weren’t representative of anything sustainable, but for reference they averaged 66.5x on the way up then 62.0x on the way down. But it is what came since that reveals silver’s unsung strength, starting in May after that anomaly reversed.
Over these latest four-plus months as silver sentiment languished in the bearish gutter and its price got sliced in half, the SGR still averaged 65.4x! With the brief exception of that unsustainable parabola, silver hasn’t been this strong relative to gold since mid-2014. Despite its necessary and healthy post-parabola collapse, silver is still doing its best versus gold in a dozen years! Myopic bearishness on silver is misplaced.
World’s biggest money managers are rebuilding gold positions
Some of the world’s biggest money managers have rebuilt their gold holdings after prices dropped, betting that long-term drivers of the precious metal will endure even as the US Federal Reserve takes a more assertive stance on inflation.
Amundi SA, Europe’s largest asset manager, bought bullion on the expectation it will return to $5,000 an ounce by year-end. Fund managers at Pictet Asset Management Ltd., Robeco Institutional Asset Management BV and Fidelity International Ltd. also added to holdings cut earlier this year, during bullion’s retreat from an all-time high.
“Gold is an asset that we consider to be cheap, a good hedge and reasonably liquid,” said Lorenzo Portelli, head of cross-asset strategy at the Amundi Investment Institute. But greater visibility over the Fed’s interest-rate path would be needed, he said, before the firm would consider adding to last month’s purchases.
That was a common theme in interviews with more than a dozen asset managers, whose firms manage a combined $27 trillion. Without exception, each of them — including BNP Paribas Asset Management and Manulife John Hancock Investments — had either added back gold in recent weeks or were maintaining bullish allocations.
But any breakout above gold’s recent ceiling near $4,600 won’t be smooth, many of the money managers said. Higher Treasury yields and increased bets for at least one Fed rate hike before year-end are undermining support for bullion, an asset that tends to be less favored when borrowing costs rise because it doesn’t pay interest.
Investors’ resolve was tested by Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh’s Aug. 28 speech at the central bank’s Jackson Hole symposium, where he warned that US inflation isn’t meaningfully slowing toward a 2% target — comments that triggered increased bets on monetary tightening.
So far, these potential speed bumps haven’t dashed the renewed conviction of long-term investors. Gold’s enduring appeal, some of the money managers said, lies in its value as a hedge within a broader investment portfolio.
“It’s become a much more acceptable asset,” said Arnout van Rijn, a portfolio manager for multi-asset and equity solutions at Robeco, a Dutch firm that oversees some $464 billion in assets. “It’s become part and parcel of every regular or normal portfolio.”
After a blistering rally backed by speculative capital took gold to an all-time high near $5,600 an ounce in January, the metal has spent much of this year in retreat. Elevated energy prices and inflationary shocks from the Iran war dragged it back to $4,000 in June. That’s when funds began to show interest.
“The downdraft to $4,000, if you didn’t own it already, was a very good buying time,” said Michael Cuggino, president of the Permanent Portfolio Family of Funds. “The long-term macro story is still in place and that’s bullish for gold,” he said, adding that “higher highs and higher lows” could be expected over time.
Bullion was trading near $4,400 an ounce in London on Friday afternoon.
For Robeco’s van Rijn, the catalyst for buying gold again was an acceleration in central-bank purchases during the second quarter. Official-sector demand recovered sharply in the period, with net purchases of 289 tons the highest for any second quarter, according to the World Gold Council.
Sophie Huynh, a portfolio manager and strategist for dynamic-asset allocation at BNP Paribas, was drawn back by a fading correlation between bullion and risk assets like equities — a trend that suggests gold’s traditional value as a hedge has returned after a period of speculative trading.
“The froth of gold has come off,” said Huynh. Instead, the metal is being powered by “fundamental drivers such as central-bank purchases and multi-asset managers looking for portfolio hedge.”
That renewed appetite for gold is reflected in funds’ net-long position tracked by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which rose in the week ended Aug. 25 to its highest level so far this year.
In one of the starkest warnings of recent weeks, Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, said investors should reduce their bond holdings and put as much as 15% of their money in gold to hedge against the risk of a US debt crisis.
His comments came as long-term US Treasury yields rose to multiyear highs, a trend that prompted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to announce more buybacks of long-dated debt. The unexpected move caused gold to spike and revived interest in the so-called debasement trade — like central-bank buying, another pillar of gold’s 2025 rally.
“You’re seeing money move out of the dollar and into hard assets — gold, Bitcoin being some of that — because there’s a loss of confidence in our fiscal credibility,” said Anthony Saglimbene, chief market strategist at Ameriprise Financial Inc., referring to the US.
Bullion’s recent recovery, added Kevin Khang, head of global economic research at Vanguard Group Inc., “is very consistent with people being concerned about the US dollar again as a store of value.”
Some of the asset managers interviewed by Bloomberg News said alarm around the world’s dominant reserve currency was overstated, but most agreed that a steady shift toward more diversified portfolios would provide a lasting platform for bullion to appreciate.
Though there’s “no obvious replacement” for the dollar, according to Christopher Hamilton, head of client investment solutions for Asia-Pacific at Invesco Ltd., that doesn’t prevent investors from “increasing diversification at the margin,” which may prove to be a more sustainable trend than any dramatic shift.
Gold, after all, makes up a relatively small share of Western investors’ portfolios, particularly after years of stunning gains in US equities. That means that even modest diversification has the potential to move bullion prices sharply.
And no matter how the Fed tries to tackle inflation — and the effect of these efforts on the gold price — investors are still inclined to hold bullion as a counter to macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, said Tracy Chen, a portfolio manager at Brandywine Global Investment Management LLC.
Gold “should still hold value as a hedge against what the Fed can’t control,” she said.
(By Yihui Xie, Yvonne Yue Li and Jack Ryan)
New deals sharpen South America’s critical minerals edge
El Pachón is a major Glencore copper-molybdenum deposit in Argentina, near the Chilean border. (Image: Glencore.)
South America is moving to turn its vast mineral wealth into a coordinated production and investment hub as governments race to secure critical minerals for energy, technology and defence.
Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru signed a joint declaration on strategic minerals on Aug. 28, establishing a regional framework to promote responsible mining investment, technical cooperation and deeper integration across mineral supply chains.
The agreement was reached during the first ministerial meeting on strategic minerals in Chile’s capital Santiago, attended by mining authorities from all four countries.
The governments said the initiative is intended to position the region as a reliable strategic supplier of minerals needed for decarbonization, electromobility and artificial intelligence.
“Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru’s pact on geology, regulation, suppliers, skills and finance could turn multiple markets into a more coherent investment proposition — but only if governments sustain coordination,” Mariano Machado, Americas principal analyst at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, said in a note on Friday.
Supply squeeze
The alliance comes as demand for critical minerals rises while production remains concentrated and new supply is slow to develop.
Based on the current project pipeline, the International Energy Agency projects global copper supply could fall 25% short of demand by 2035, with new mines typically taking more than 15 years to reach production.
Lithium faces similar pressures, compounded by stagnant greenfield exploration spending and rising discovery costs.
Latin America is well placed to help fill that need, according to a recent World Economic Forum report produced in collaboration with McKinsey & Co.
The region holds significant reserves of copper, lithium, nickel, graphite, manganese, rare earth elements and other minerals essential to electrification, the energy transition and digital infrastructure.
Argentina and Chile together account for about 40% of global lithium reserves, while Chile and Peru hold roughly 30% of the world’s copper reserves. Brazil has about a quarter of global graphite reserves and 15% of rare earth reserves, according to the report.
The WEF said Latin America’s competitive advantage extends beyond the scale of its deposits to the complementary resources and industrial capabilities spread across its economies. At the same time, Western efforts to reduce exposure to China are directing mining investors towards new markets, putting the region near the front of the queue, Machado said.
The new declaration seeks to capitalize on those advantages by coordinating policy in areas including geology, regulation, suppliers, skills and financing.
One treaty, $20.7 billion
Chile and Argentina are already putting that approach into practice. The countries have cleared operating protocols for major cross-border projects, reducing uncertainty where mineral deposits cross an international boundary but encounter separate permitting and operating regimes.
Clearer rules could make such projects easier to plan and finance. Still, unions, communities and provincial governments are likely to push to retain jobs, investment and revenue on their side of the border.
According to Chilean mining and economy minister Daniel Mas, reviving the mining integration treaty with Argentina would unlock more than $20.7 billion in investment and add 540,000 metric tons of copper a year to the market.
The larger challenge is turning South America’s geological strength into the industrial capacity needed to capture more value from its resources rather than simply exporting mined material.
Brazil’s newly approved critical-minerals framework illustrates that ambition. It pairs roughly $1 billion in tax incentives and a new guarantee fund with a drive to expand domestic refining and production of batteries and magnets.
The support comes with tighter government oversight. A new council will be able to scrutinize foreign partnerships, ownership changes and mining titles, creating a trade-off between incentives for downstream development and greater state control over investment.
Verisk Maplecroft’s country-risk data identifies Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Peru as attractive critical-minerals markets because they combine large deposits with relatively lower resource-nationalism risks and improving operating environments.
But geological potential and regional agreements alone will not unlock the capital needed to develop them. Permitting, fiscal stability and policy continuity will determine whether South America can convert its mineral power play into new mines, processing capacity and a lasting place in global supply chains.
South America has the resources to wield greater influence over critical-minerals supply. The harder task is creating the investment conditions to turn them into production.
Latin America has been at the centre of a growing global power struggle this year, as governments and investors focus on who controls critical minerals and the supply chains behind them. If the region matters to you, don’t miss MINING.COM’s regional series tracking the geopolitical forces reshaping it and why markets are increasingly driven by global alliances as much as local politics.
Copper at risk of rare supply decline as mine setbacks mount
Copper has been on a record-breaking tear in the past year, driven largely by tariff-related trade flows. Bullish investors are betting that flatlining mine supply will drive prices even higher.
A string of disappointing results is undermining expectations that global mine supply would post at least modest growth this year. International Copper Study Group data show output fell 1.1% in the first half, with major producers Codelco and Freeport-McMoRan Inc. posting double-digit declines. Morgan Stanley, which entered the year expecting mine supply to expand, now sees it little changed or slightly lower, raising the prospect of the first annual decline since 2017.
That would be a striking outcome — copper trading near record highs should encourage miners to maximize output. Deteriorating ore quality, accidents, project setbacks and extreme weather are frustrating those efforts, and fueling concerns about whether supply can keep pace with demand as electrification gathers pace over the coming years.
For now, there’s no global shortage of refined copper, metal that has been fully processed after being dug out of the ground or recycled. Speculation about a potential US tariff on refined imports has drawn record volumes into US-based warehouses, while supplies elsewhere have grown tighter. That distortion may prove temporary, but mine-supply constraints are not, and bulls are betting those limitations will ultimately drive prices higher.
The difficulties miners face in boosting output are the underlying theme of a “very, very tight market,” Evy Hambro, BlackRock Inc.’s thematic and sector investing global head, said last month in a Bloomberg Television interview. “It’s declining grades at existing operations,” he said. “It’s tired, very, very old assets. It’s a lack of new development of supply coming into the market.”
Large mining companies tracked by Jefferies Financial Group Inc. that account for two-thirds of global supply saw first-half output fall 3.5%, including a 4.1% second-quarter drop driven mainly by Freeport, Codelco, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. and Antofagasta Plc.
Top producer Chile has been at the center of the disappointing performance, posting its weakest second-quarter output in at least 19 years. The country cut its full-year production forecast for a second straight quarter and now expects a 2.6% decline. Chile’s state-owned Codelco has warned that even a target of modest growth this year may prove a bridge too far.
The International Copper Study Group expects global mine supply to increase 1.6% this year, though that forecast was made in April before the full extent of the first-half setbacks became clear.
Jefferies analysts said Tuesday that the latest production results from the industry reinforce their view of tightly constrained mine output, with risks to overall supply remaining firmly to the downside even as some major operations ramp up.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been one of the few bright spots, with first-half copper shipments rising more than 4% as Chinese-backed operations including CMOC Group Ltd.’s Tenke Fungurume and Kisanfu mines continued to underpin growth.
Read More: Congo Cements Copper Powerhouse Status as Exports Rise Again
Outside the Congo, the weakness is increasingly structural. Morgan Stanley analyst Amy Gower said the industry is now feeling the effects of sharp cuts to mining investment following the commodity downturn a decade ago, leaving a much thinner pipeline of new projects. She sees the possibility of an annual decline in mine output.
Even with prices well above levels needed to incentivize investment, lengthy permitting means efforts to accelerate new mines are unlikely to deliver much additional supply before 2030, while setbacks at operating mines keep piling up.
Weather is adding to the risks, with recent disruptive storms in Chile offering a glimpse of what could be in store with forecasts of a strengthening El Niño ahead. Gower said mining disruptions have historically been greater during El Niño years, with Chile particularly exposed, and mines in Congo and Zambia potentially vulnerable because of their reliance on hydropower.
Weak mine output doesn’t necessarily translate directly into a shortage of refined metal, which also includes output from scrap. Morgan Stanley expects refined production to rise about 0.9% this year even with no growth at mines, as scarce concentrate and a massive expansion in smelting capacity encourage processors to turn to alternative feedstocks.
Analysts’ estimates for the supply-demand balance this year and next vary widely, but there’s broad agreement that constrained mine supply will remain an important support for prices. Copper on touched a record of $14,527.50 a ton the London Metal Exchange in January and is again trading not far off that level.
On Friday, benchmark LME prices headed for a 10th weekly gain — the longest such stretch since 1994 — and traded at $14,304.50 a ton at 1:51 p.m. in London.
Citigroup Inc. analyst Tom Mulqueen forecasts $15,000 a ton by year-end, with the potential to reach about $17,000 if manufacturing recovers or demand from the energy transition, data centers or strategic stockpiling proves stronger than expected. He plays down the threat from the vast US inventory buildup, arguing that even without tariffs those stockpiles are likely to unwind gradually rather than flood back onto the global market.
With demand set to outpace supply growth in the coming years, prices are likely to remain elevated, according to Anglo American Plc Chief Operating Officer Ruben Fernandes.
“Everyone is investing in copper, everyone likes copper,” he said in an interview last week. “Supply will come, but the question is how quickly.”
(By James Attwood, Yvonne Yue Li and Mariana Durao)
Vale shelves base metals IPO amid Brazil pushback: report
The Salobo Mining Complex holds the largest copper mineral reserve in Brazil. (Image courtesy of Vale Base Metals.)
Vale (NYSE: VALE) has shelved plans for an initial public offering of its critical-minerals subsidiary Vale Base Metals Ltd. amid political opposition in Brazil to potentially losing control over strategic mining assets.
The Globe and Mail first reported the decision, citing unnamed sources. London-based VBM was carved out internally from its parent in 2023 in preparation for an eventual listing and operates with separate management and investor-relations teams. CEO Shaun Usmar said in March the company was working to have the business ready for a potential IPO by midyear.
The listing could still be revived at a later date, according to the report.
VBM holds Vale’s global portfolio of copper, nickel and cobalt operations across Canada, Brazil, Japan, Britain and Indonesia. Vale acquired its Canadian nickel assets through its 2006 takeover of Inco Ltd.
Copper focus
VBM agreed in February to sell most of its stake in a Canadian nickel venture as Vale focuses on doubling copper production over the next decade.
The strategy comes as copper, a key metal for electrification and energy infrastructure, has outperformed nickel. Copper prices have climbed about 45% over the past year, roughly four times nickel’s gain.
Putting the IPO on hold leaves Vale with its base metals portfolio intact as it pursues that copper expansion, while preserving the option of returning to public markets with the unit later.
Value of top 50 mining companies surges by $357 billion after monster August rally
The gain took the ranking back above $2.5 trillion for the first time since February when gold stocks were shining brightest thanks to bullion trading close to $1,000 per ounce above today’s levels.
Gold started the month at $4,043 an ounce and climbed to almost $4,660 by 25 August, its highest since mid-May, before a hawkish Jackson Hole speech from Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh and fresh US strikes on Iran knocked it back. Even after that retreat bullion finished almost 10% higher, its best month since January, and silver did better still, at one point up 20% inside three weeks to $70 an ounce.
The gold standard-bearers
What was different this time is that the gold miners, so often left behind by their own product, kept up.
Between them the gold, silver and royalty companies supplied $183 billion of the month’s gain. The gold miners alone added $138 billion, a 31% rise in four weeks, and twelve of the thirteen in the ranking finished higher with one glaring exception.
As a group, precious metals stocks are still trading 19% below their end-February peak (which is technically close to a bear market, but certainly does not feel like one) and August only gave back half the value lost since then.
Southern Copper breaks up the old firm
For as long as this ranking has been compiled, and for decades before that, BHP and Rio Tinto have been the industry’s number one and number two.
On 24 August that pairing was broken, if only for a few days. Southern Copper, riding record quarterly results and a copper price that set a fresh record above $14,000 a tonne, touched an all-time high of $220.78 a share and a market value of roughly $183 billion, a few billion clear of Rio Tinto.
Copper’s pullback in the last week of the month restored the old order, but only just. Southern Copper closed August at $176.4 billion against Rio Tinto’s $177.0 billion, a gap of $600 million between two companies that between them are worth more than a third of a trillion dollars. Rio Tinto is up 6.7% for the month after its highest first-half earnings in four years.
Southern Copper is up 15.7% for the month and 48% for the year. With copper still within a stone’s throw of all-time highs and iron ore’s prospects much dimmer, the question may be not whether the Mexican-Peruvian producer takes second place for good, but when. Indeed, on this ranking’s own 1.5 times revenue test (see methodology below) Rio is, strictly speaking, an iron ore company enjoying editorial clemency.
Red metal redemption
Copper’s rally to the mid-$14,000s was mostly on paper thanks to the will-he won’t he tariff overhang, but mining investors continued to ride the red metal in August.
The twelve copper companies in the ranking added $70 billion over the month. Freeport-McMoRan gained 20.8% after beating profit forecasts despite the slump at Grasberg and is now worth 47% more than at the start of the year.
BHP, which added $25 billion in August, more than any company outside the gold sector, had copper overtake iron ore as its biggest earner in the full-year results it reported mid-month, and is up 57% for 2026, an eye-watering performance for the only ever $200 billion plus mining stock. BHP, like 30 other counters in the ranking, hit an all time high in 2026.
It is the pattern of the whole year in miniature. Gold has supplied every lurch on the chart, up and down. Copper has supplied the climb underneath it, and the diversified majors that sit at the top of the table are, increasingly, a copper bet. When Anglo American and Teck Resources become Anglo-Teck, another 100-year old diversified company will officially move to the copper column (but not before Glencore takes its pound of flesh).
The $100 billion club fills up
The rally repopulated the top of the table. The number of companies worth more than $100 billion rose from four to seven as Newmont, Freeport-McMoRan and Agnico Eagle cleared the mark to join BHP, Rio Tinto, Southern Copper and Zijin Mining. Glencore, up 10.4% in August and 47% for the year on a 15% jump in copper output and near-record trading profits, is the one left waiting at $94.6 billion.
Polyus pulls the other way
Only four of the fifty ended the month lower, and the sharpest fall ran directly against the tide. Polyus, Russia’s largest gold miner, lost 24.3% and $5.3 billion of market value, sliding from 28th to 47th and coming to rest two places above the cut-off.
The reasons have nothing to do with the metal. Polyus shocked its shareholders in July by suspending dividends until 2030 to fund a wave of new projects, the stock lost a quarter of its value in a session, and it has kept falling since amid talk in Moscow of a windfall levy on miners.
Divide each gold miner’s market value by the ounces it produces in a year and the ranking turns upside down. Investors are paying about $30,000 for every annual ounce at Agnico Eagle and $23,700 at Newmont. Polyus, which produced 2.6 million ounces last year from some of the lowest-cost mines in the industry, is valued at little more than $6,000 per annual ounce. At Newmont’s multiple the Moscow-listed company would be worth more than $60 billion rather than $16.6 billion, and at Agnico Eagle’s it would top $78 billion
Fellow Russian Norilsk Nickel was flat in dollar terms, a modest interim dividend doing nothing for a stock that is down a fifth this year.
The price of admission jumped to $15.6 billion from $13.6 billion a month earlier, and the bottom of the table churned accordingly. Lundin Gold, which narrowly missed July’s cut, came back in at 44th after a 27% month built on new discoveries around Fruta del Norte and a record quarter. Western Mining, which had scraped in at 50th in July, went straight back out.
Over the year the door has swung further. Since the end of 2025 five names have climbed into the fifty and five have dropped out. Managem, the Moroccan gold and base metals group, is the standout arrival, up more than 170% in dollar terms, alongside Coeur Mining, Kazatomprom after a 9% rise in first-half uranium output, South32 after agreeing to sell its aluminium business to Alcoa for $5.6 billion, and MMG, holding on at 50th.
August’s $357 billion is the largest single-month gain in a series that runs back to 2019, and the company it keeps is striking. The previous record was set in January, when the Top 50 added $338 billion, and February added a further $267 billion on the way to the ranking’s all-time high of $2.75 trillion.
The year owns the other extreme as well. In March, as gold fell away from its record, $420 billion evaporated inside a month, the worst the ranking has recorded. No twelve months have moved the industry the way the last twelve have.
The map redraws
The rally shifted the industry’s centre of gravity. Australia, home to BHP, Rio Tinto, Fortescue and South32, edged past Canada to become the most valuable mining address on the planet, $538 billion against $534 billion, even though Canada sends twelve companies into the ranking to Australia’s seven.
The United States is third at $358 billion on the strength of its gold and copper names, ahead of China at $296 billion. Russia, with Polyus collapsing and Norilsk standing still, is worth $39 billion, down 44% since December and the heady days when Uralkali and Alrosa managed to rank in the middle and Polyus and Norilsk vied for the top 10 are well and truly over.
