FT Mining Summit 2024: Our leaders share key insights on the future of mining

Hosted at The Langham hotel in London, the Summit brought together some of the most influential and well-respected individuals in the mining industry to share their insights and engage with their peers, with various panel discussions, keynote interviews and networking activities taking place throughout the two days.

The theme of this year’s Summit was “Growing the low-carbon value chain” and the focus was on how the energy transition has the potential to be a boon for the mining industry, particularly in relation to the huge volumes of metals and minerals required to build the clean energy infrastructure needed to decarbonise the global economy.

Representing Anglo American at the Summit were Duncan Wanblad, Chief Executive, Alison Atkinson, Projects & Development Director, and Paul Gait, Group Head of Strategy.

Keynote Interview – Duncan Wanblad 

On the first day of the Summit, Duncan sat down with Harry Dempsey, the FT’s Commodities Correspondent, for a keynote interview. In the interview, Duncan described the “revolutionary change rather than evolutionary change” that Anglo American is undertaking to unlock the inherent value in our portfolio and thereby accelerate delivery of our strategic priorities of operational excellence, portfolio simplification and growth.

Duncan explained: “We are setting ourselves up to be the greatest mining business in the industry and we have the underlying assets and the capabilities to be able to do that. But there is no way to do that without a reset, and that is what we are going through now.”

Panel Discussion – Alison Atkinson 

Shortly before Duncan’s keynote interview, Alison participated in a panel discussion called “Bridging the strategic and the technical – Lessons learnt and pitfalls to avoid when constructing a new mine”.

In the discussion, Alison explained Anglo American’s holistic approach to building a new mine, not only in a technical and logistical sense, but also in terms of understanding the expectations of all stakeholders involved particularly at the local level, and the importance of building trust with a range of partners to access, develop and operate sites in a sustainable and responsible way.

Commenting on this approach, Alison said: “When you think about the fact that these assets are going to be there for a significant amount of time, sometimes generations and lifetimes, you have to think about what you should be putting in place in terms of technology and how to future-proof as much as possible, but you also need to tap into what the local community wants."

Panel Discussion – Paul Gait

On the second and final day of the conference, Paul participated in a panel discussion called “The Circular Economy – To what extent can recycling fill the demand gap?”.

Taking a slightly contrarian view to most of the other panellists, Paul proposed that recycling alone cannot fill the supply-demand gap for the metals and minerals required to decarbonise the global economy, especially copper, and highlighted the continued importance of primary supply through mining to meet this demand.

“If we take the total capital stock of copper that is embedded in the global economy, that is about 500 million tonnes,” Paul explained.

“That is on average about 60 kilograms per person. In the Western world, that number is about 200 to 250 kilograms per person. So, if we want to replicate Western standards of living more broadly, and if we actually take seriously some of the developmental goals around elimination of poverty for example, that’s the magnitude of the challenge that is ahead of us. Therefore, we need to find somewhere between 1.5 to 2 billion tonnes of additional copper from primary sources of supply to be embedded in that physical capital stock, before we can then recycle it."