Anglo American highlights sustainability and innovation for copper growth
Anglo American is presenting its regular sustainability performance update, including a particular focus on how it is working to unlock significant additional value from its world-class copper endowments through a holistic approach to sustainability and innovation.
Its integrated approach is aligned with Anglo American’s commitment to delivering outcomes that are both profitable and sustainable – unlocking value-accretive and responsible production growth in future-enabling metals and minerals.
Duncan Wanblad, Chief Executive of Anglo American, said: “Sustainability, innovation and operating responsibly are embedded into our strategy: from day-to-day operational decisions to portfolio choices. We believe this approach is a pre-requisite for sustainable value creation and is integral to our DNA as a company. Our aim is to reliably and responsibly provide metals and minerals 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.”
Helena Nonka, Anglo American’s Strategy & Sustainability Director, added: “By integrating sustainability and innovation in our FutureSmart Mining™ programme, we believe we are uniquely positioned to deliver the numerous growth opportunities within our portfolio, as well as others that we aim to secure over time, while our more focused portfolio will allow that growth to be more transparently valued in the market. With many of the world’s undeveloped copper resources sterilised due to environmental and community constraints, we continue to find innovative ways to unlock those and other opportunities for all stakeholders. While each undeveloped resource has its own physical and social characteristics, we have shown what can be achieved when genuine dialogue, collaboration and trust are combined with the required technical and sustainability competencies built up over time to deliver profitable outcomes and enduring value for – stakeholders.”
Patricio Hidalgo, CEO of Anglo American in Chile, commented: “Across our world-class copper portfolio we continue to focus on delivering production as responsibly and as profitably as possible. Sustainability considerations are embedded into our strategy and support our permitting track record – including with respect to water, which is the greatest sustainability challenge in our region. With this in mind, we are pulling together all our accumulated expertise to deliver innovative water solutions, such as our Integrated Water Security Project at Los Bronces and the rollout of our patented Hydraulic Dewatered Stacking (HDS) technology at El Soldado. Both are critical to our licence to operate, while we expect HDS has the potential to transform the nature of tailings and land rehabilitation in our industry, demonstrating to shareholders, communities, governments and customers what responsible mining really can look like.
Sustainable Mining Plan
Anglo American’s longstanding and holistic approach to sustainability helps to build trust with its employees and stakeholders across society, reduces operational risk and delivers direct financial value for our business. Its reputation as a responsible mining company supports our ability to access future resource development opportunities, both from the significant endowments within our business and more broadly – critical to delivering growth ambitions – while also allowing us to attract impact finance partners to deliver sustainability outcomes far beyond own financial investments
Anglo American’s Sustainable Mining Plan is designed to be a flexible, living plan and we continue to evolve it and optimise the delivery pathways as it learn and make progress and as technologies develop, while also ensuring it stays relevant and suitably stretching, in tune with its stakeholders’ and employees’ expectations for our business. The company is updating the Sustainable Mining Plan to reflect Anglo American’s future portfolio composition that was announced in May 2024. It continue to ensure that its sustainability ambitions deliver the tangible value for its many stakeholders and it will set out an update when it has completed the review, likely only once the portfolio simplification has made further progress during 2025
