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Anglo American updates on progress towards sustainable mining

25 October, 2023

Anglo American plc (“Anglo American”) is today presenting its regular sustainability performance update, including how its integrated approach to sustainability in project development is securing our ability to deliver responsible long term growth in future-enabling metals and minerals.

Duncan Wanblad, Chief Executive of Anglo American, said: “Our unwavering focus is on driving consistent, competitive performance to deliver our next phase of value creation – at the heart of which is our integrated approach to sustainability. One of our greatest challenges as an industry, though, is to bridge the clear gap between increasing recognition of the need for ever greater volumes of mined materials and society’s acceptance of the activity required to produce them. Our learned experience in delivering improved sustainability outcomes from successful projects such as Quellaveco is part of the solution and is integral to how we make our strategic and investment choices – across our current operations and projects in design and development – and to unlocking enduring value for all our stakeholders.”

Helena Nonka, Strategy & Sustainability Director, added: “We have long seen a holistic approach to sustainability as a key driver of commercial and stakeholder value. Sustainability is a core competency that we deploy throughout our business, from strategic portfolio choices to project design and delivery to day-to-day operational decisions, always with value creation in mind. Societal expectations of our industry will continue to increase as will the need for the essential metals and minerals and we must build greater trust if we are to provide materials that are required to decarbonise our planet and that are also the building blocks of modern life – from housing to food – for ever more people.”

Tom McCulley, CEO of Anglo American’s Crop Nutrients business, concluded: “For multi-generational assets, such as Woodsmith and Quellaveco before it, it is critical that we embed the latest thinking and technologies into safe and sustainable modern mine designs. Building on the blueprint for success established at Quellaveco, we will continue to deploy the integration of technology and sustainability at Woodsmith to set a new benchmark for modern mining – out of sight, safe, reliable, and catering to our customers and society’s needs. Aligning that design at Woodsmith with the highly attractive environmental credentials of our low carbon, organic-certified and high efficacy fertiliser product is a further aspect of the value proposition of our product for customers. We are building the next generation of FutureSmart MiningTM at Anglo American."

Alison Atkinson, Projects & Development Director, commented: “Our ability to deliver responsible and value-accretive production growth relies on us embedding the full breadth of sustainability considerations into the design, development and operation of our assets. Taking our new Quellaveco operation in Peru as a prime example – fully digital, automated and with innovative water supply designs factored in from the outset, we are applying that same innovation-led approach to our next phase of projects. From our Woodsmith fertiliser project under way in the UK, to our potential Sakatti polymetallic project in Finland and other expansion options across our copper portfolio, we are minimising our physical footprint through technology and designing operations that better meet the expectations of our shareholders, stakeholders and society.”

Towards carbon neutral operations

Anglo American is moving towards its goal of carbon neutral operations by 2040, evolving our pathways as we progress, learn and as technologies develop. At the end of 2022, our Scope 1 and 2 emissions were 21% below the peak levels of 2019 – a significant reduction that reflects our transition to100% renewable electricity supply across our South America operations, with Australia to follow in 2025. In Southern Africa we are working in partnership with EDF Renewables to build a 3-5GW renewable energy ecosystem of wind and solar generation capacity, designed to tackle our largest remaining source of Scope 2 emissions and support energy reliability and grid resilience while catalysing broad socio-economic opportunities.

While Scope 3 emissions reduction is largely dependent on the decarbonisation of our value chains and the steel industry in particular, we are progressing towards our ambition to halve these emissions by 2040. We are working with several prominent steelmaking customers to help develop cleaner steelmaking technologies, collaborating to explore ways for premium quality, responsibly produced iron ore from our Kumba mines in South Africa and Minas-Rio mine in Brazil to be used as highly valued feedstock for less carbon intensive production processes. To our existing decarbonisation partnerships with steel producers across Asia and Europe, we have recently added an agreement with China’s Baosteel, one of the world’s largest steel producers and long-standing Anglo American customer.

Sustainability Performance Presentation

Today’s Sustainability Performance presentation will be available on the Anglo American website https://www.angloamerican.com/investors/investor-presentations at 1.00pm UK time, with the presentation itself starting at 1.30pm UK time. A full recording will be available following the presentation.

For further information, please contact:

Media Investors
UK UK
James Wyatt-Tilby Paul Galloway
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8759 Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8718
Marcelo Esquivel Emma Waterworth
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8891 Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8574
Rebecca Meeson–Frizelle Juliet Newth
Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
Tel: + 44 (0)20 7968 1374 Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 8830
South Africa Michelle Jarman
Nevashnee Naicker Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 (0)20 7968 1494
Tel: +27 (0)11 638 3189  
Sibusiso Tshabalala  
Email: [email protected]  
Tel: +27 (0)11 638 2175  

Notes to editors:

Anglo American is a leading global mining company and our products are the essential ingredients in almost every aspect of modern life. Our portfolio of world-class competitive operations, with a broad range of future development options, provides many of the future-enabling metals and minerals for a cleaner, greener, more sustainable world and that meet the fast growing every day demands of billions of consumers. With our people at the heart of our business, we use innovative practices and the latest technologies to discover new resources and to mine, process, move and market our products to our customers – safely and sustainably.

As a responsible producer of copper, nickel, platinum group metals, diamonds (through De Beers), premium quality iron ore and steelmaking coal – with crop nutrients in development – we are committed to being carbon neutral across our operations by 2040. More broadly, our Sustainable Mining Plan commits us to a series of stretching goals to ensure we work towards a healthy environment, creating thriving communities and building trust as a corporate leader. We work together with our business partners and diverse stakeholders to unlock enduring value from precious natural resources for the benefit of the communities and countries in which we operate, for society as a whole, and for our shareholders. Anglo American is re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives.

www.angloamerican.com

Forward-looking statements:

This document includes forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this document, including, without limitation, those regarding Anglo American’s financial position, business, acquisition and divestment strategy, dividend policy, plans and objectives of management for future operations (including development plans and objectives relating to Anglo American’s products, production forecasts and Ore Reserve and Mineral Resource positions) and environmental, social and corporate governance goals and aspirations, are forward-looking statements. By their nature, such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Anglo American or industry results to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.

Such forward-looking statements are based on numerous assumptions regarding Anglo American’s present and future business strategies and the environment in which Anglo American will operate in the future. Important factors that could cause Anglo American’s actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include, among others, levels of actual production during any period, levels of global demand and commodity market prices, mineral resource exploration and development capabilities, recovery rates and other operational capabilities, safety, health or environmental incidents, the effects of global pandemics and outbreaks of infectious diseases, the outcome of litigation or regulatory proceedings, the availability of mining and processing equipment, the ability to produce and transport products profitably, the availability of transport infrastructure, the impact of foreign currency exchange rates on market prices and operating costs, the availability of sufficient credit, the effects of inflation, political uncertainty and economic conditions in relevant areas of the world, the actions of competitors, activities by courts, regulators and governmental authorities such as in relation to permitting or forcing closure of mines and ceasing of operations or maintenance of Anglo American’s assets and changes in taxation or safety, health, environmental or other types of regulation in the countries where Anglo American operates, conflicts over land and resource ownership rights and such other risk factors identified in Anglo American’s most recent Annual Report. Forward-looking statements should, therefore, be construed in light of such risk factors and undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this document. Anglo American expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking (except as required by applicable law, the City Code on Takeovers and Mergers, the UK Listing Rules, the Disclosure and Transparency Rules of the Financial Conduct Authority, the Listings Requirements of the securities exchange of the JSE Limited in South Africa, the SIX Swiss Exchange, the Botswana Stock Exchange and the Namibian Stock Exchange and any other applicable regulations) to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement contained herein to reflect any change in Anglo American’s expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.

Nothing in this document should be interpreted to mean that future earnings per share of Anglo American will necessarily match or exceed its historical published earnings per share. Certain statistical and other information about Anglo American included in this document is sourced from publicly available third-party sources. As such it has not been independently verified and presents the views of those third parties but may not necessarily correspond to the views held by Anglo American and Anglo American expressly disclaims any responsibility for, or liability in respect of, such information.

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