Mark Cutifani believes his peers will need to harness all the collective wisdom and motivational and technological tools available to them to be the “modern” mining companies the world expects – and needs. And it still might not be enough.
Delivering a keynote address at the 2025 AusIMM Underground Operators Conference in Adelaide, South Australia, Cutifani was talking to the industry demographic he’d cut his mining teeth with near Wollongong nearly 50 years ago. He said the increasing depth and technical complexity of today’s mines were just two of the challenges in front of industry leaders.
Cutifani, the current chair of Vale Base Metals, became one of the mining world’s most respected CEOs, previously leading Anglo American through a decade of immense change through to 2022.
Using the commodity of the future, copper, to support his case, Cutifani said maybe 700 million tonnes of the metal had been produced over 5000 years. The world might need that much again in the next 20 years as it electrified transport and other infrastructure and moved away from fossil fuels.
Compared with only 100 years ago, the industry was mining eight times the amount of ore now to create a tonne of copper.
“Grades have gone from 4% to 0.5%,” Cutifani said. “We mine 24 times the amount of waste tonnes to produce that same of same amount of copper. We use 16 times the amount of energy and we use twice the amount of water. That’s on average across the industry.
“That exponential increase in footprints, whether it be water, whether it be energy and other key measures, is something that we’ve got to swim against.
“That’s how big the challenge is.
“And it needs different thinking.”
The conference heard about technology advances – particularly exponentially increasing computing power, connectivity and automation – that were opening up new safety, efficiency and productivity possibilities. “We’ve never had so many tools available to us to make a difference,” Cutifani said.
It also heard only two of the world’s 40 largest undeveloped copper deposits – containing an estimated 528 million tonnes of the red metal – had made it into production. A number of the deposits were discovered decades ago. Many faced intractable permitting delays.
Cutifani said the industry had to get on the front foot socially and politically. It had to make a better fist of connecting social, economic and even environmental advances with mining’s metals harvest in the minds of consumers, communities, investors and people it needed as future operators, professionals and leaders. It needed to use technology more effectively to fight cost pressures surging on many fronts. And to make the industry more appealing to the best and brightest people.
“Making sure that we understand how we can motivate, inspire and lead people to create something special is the key to success in any operation,” he said.
“That starts with safety and demonstrating that you care as a leader, and I mean genuinely care, and ultimately turning those relationships into a willingness to give you the best they’ve got. If you can build those relationships then you can create something really special.
“Whether we talk about the productivity of people, which is a key driver, [or] capital productivity, where we talk about cost per unit of installed production and critical equipment productivity … in the end, if we can get those numbers right, then the returns to shareholders, which ultimately determines whether we get capital and create a future for the operation, are absolutely key.”
His experience going back to his first few weeks in an underground coal mine in New South Wales told Cutifani that productivity, in the short term, was not always the most pressing issue, “but in the longer term, it’s the only issue”.
“In my 48 years now in the industry one of the first questions I ask in any operation is, do you understand how the nature of your business changes? I ask about structural cost drift … How quickly do the costs in your operations change? I’ve only had [a few] engineers that have made a real fist of answering the question and that makes me wonder how much we really understand these things.
“Maybe we’ve all been in the industry for so long that we miss what’s happening on a regular basis and don’t naturally look at how quickly we need to improve.
“I think it is a really important part of conversations in any organisation – recognising how quickly things are changing.
“If you don’t understand the basics, those structural cost drivers in the business, and relate those issues to the opportunities you can create, you are not going anywhere.
“At Anglo American we were the only company that put the technical director on the board of directors. And I said to the board, before I joined Anglo American, I want the technical director on the board. And they said, why? I said, the CFO’s on the board talking about the financial balance sheet. I want the technical director to talk about the mineral balance sheet. You need to have balance in the conversation. And as CEO, yes, I’m a mining engineer, so I’m going to naturally lean there, but I want to take one step back and I want you to hear the different perspectives and how we’re balancing and connecting those two perspectives in the way we’re running the business.
“That changed the nature of the conversation. Now, [after] leaving Anglo American, they didn’t replicate that model which I was disappointed with. I think it changes the debate.
“But it’s a critical one that I think all major mining companies should be thinking through.”
