Water, permits constraints to new copper mining supply

Sustainability and permitting have been identified by Anglo American as two supply side challenges to bringing on new copper supply.

Helena Nonka, strategy & sustainability director at the global mining company, noted three global trends underpinning the demand for copper:

• Decarbonisation of energy, industrial and transport systems;
• Population growth forecast to hit around 9.7 billion by 2050 (UNDP); and
• The pull for improved living standards for a growing and urbanising global population.

Copper is a critical raw material in the development of infrastructure, products and technologies.

According to chief executive Duncan Wamblad, who was responding to a question during Anglo American’s recent sustainability performance update, mining permits is “probably one of the biggest challenges that the mining industry faces today in terms of bringing on new projects”.

“And there is no doubt that the consequence of all of this is that projects are taking longer, they are becoming more expensive, and they are becoming onerous in terms of the operating criteria associated with them,” he said.

“But I don’t think we can ever hope that the content of permits diminishes and therefore the requirements to be deeply rigorous around data collection, the modeling of that data, the avoidance of impacts that go to the mine design or the process flow sheets that are associated with it, particularly areas where there is very high stress,” he added.

Duncan, who has over 30 years of global mining experience, believes that having a deeply embedded way of dealing with societal expectations is a competitive advantage.

“Having the sensibility of seeing that this is the direction of travel, understanding how these things work, and having a deeply ingrained system within the organisation… where the decisions that are the right decisions are made intrinsically by the people in the operations all of the time. These are things that lead ultimately to people saying, okay, that is a company that I can trust,” he explained.

Duncan, who is also a member of the company’s sustainability committee, said water is a number one challenge for Anglo American’s operations, particularly so in South America.

“That [water] is not going to go away any soon. Climate change is a reality, and the fact is [that] societal expectations are now at a completely new level. And there is just no way that these are going to be avoided,” he said.

To address the matter, Anglo is following a three-pronged approach which encompasses an integrated water security project (using desalinated water from 2026 at Los Bronces); a complementary water source project (a desalination plant and pipeline construction in or Collahuasi); and hydraulic dewatered stacking (improved tailings footprint and stability platform for rehabilitation in El Soldado).