These are the world’s 40 biggest mining companies

Frik Els | June 14, 2016 | 5:19 pm Base Metals Battery Metals Energy Precious Metals Africa  Asia  Australia  Coal  Copper  Gold  Iron Ore  Lithium  Nickel  Platinum  Rare Earth  Uranium  Zinc  

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These are the world's 40 biggest mining companiesPwC’s latest report into the performance of the world’s 40 largest mining companies shows just what a watershed year 2015 was.

The management consultants’ Mine 2015 report shows the top 40 companies suffering their first collective net loss in history ($27 billion), a decline in collective market capitalization of 37% (to below half a trillion dollars from a peak of $1.6 trillion in 2010), the lowest return on capital ever, asset impairments totalling $53 billion (for a total of nearly $200 billion since 2010), record high leverage of 46% and operating expenditure cuts of $83 billion.

The entries, re-entries and movements up and down the ranking also provides insight into the changing landscape of global mining.

A lithium miner joins top ranks of listed mining firms for the first time as the price of the battery ingredient skyrockets

The authors point out that the market capitalization threshold for attaining Top 40 status remained consistent at $4.5 billion despite “the huge decreases in value of the top mining companies, and demonstrates that the new entrants are catching up.”

China is featuring more heavily. All four companies admitted to the list for the first time was from China, pushing out Canada’s First Quantum and Teck Resources. China now provides 12 of the top 40 listed mining firms versus six from Canada despite one Chinese firm dropping out.

Gold’s changing fortunes saw AngloGold Ashanti re-emerge in the ranking for the first time since 2013 although other top gold producers Goldfields and Kinross haven’t made it back onto the list. When grouped by primary commodity mined gold producers still lost a combined $12 billion in market value.

The only sector to show an increase in market value was rare earths with the world’s top producer of the 17 elements jumping 23 places in the ranking. Another technology mineral is showing up for the first time.

Even though it’s early days for the lithium boom, the Top 40 has already welcomed its first miner of the battery raw material. Sichuan Tianqi Lithium enters as the world’s 31st most valuable miner helped by a doubling of the price of lithium carbonate just over the final months of 2015 and predictions of explosive growth in demand spurred by the electric vehicle and mass grid storage market.

These are the world's 40 biggest mining companies

Source: PwC Mine 2015

 

Download the PwC report here

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25 Comments

  • Robert_S_Stewart

    This list is two years out of date. Is there any way you could print the mid-2016 list of the world’s biggest mining companies? This list changes every five minutes.

  • Mark

    Calling Silver Wheaton a mining company? Really? More like a finance company.

  • Uramin

    It does not make sense to compare pure mining companies with companies acting primarily in energy and other sectors, like China Shenhua Energy, which is third in this list. Remember, always compare apples to apples. Useless research, because market cap changes on daily basis.

    • MINING.com Editors

      You’re right Uramin, you can compile these lists in many different ways. If you drop Shenhua because they are also involved in power generation, you should strip out BHP’s (and Freeport) oil business and not consider Rio’s downstream aluminum operations. And how do you account for Glencore’s trading arm (more than a quarter of its earnings). And as Mark commented should you consider Silver Wheaton a financing company and take it off the list? And yes the ranking obviously changes all the time – it’s more indicative of trends than daily stock market ups and downs – Frik

      • Uramin

        China Shenhua Energy’s power generation and transportation segments generated more than 80% of total company’s profit last year, leaving less than 10% of profits generated by its coal mining business, and I bet that BHP’s, Freeport’s, Glencore’s mining segments comprise a lion’s share of those companies’ global profits. It does make sense to compare financial results of those companies’ mining segments as of December 31, 2015, for example. Yes, it requires a bit of research, but at least we can avoid those misleading and useless information provided by PwC.

  • Franz

    Hmmmm… Where is KGHM?

    • MINING.com Editors

      Hi Franz, KGHM was worth $3.2 billion on the Warsaw Stock Exchange at the end of last year (and less now) so it didn’t make the cut ($4.5bn)

  • Uramin

    PwC included Silver Wheaton in this list, but forgot about Franco Nevada, which is in the same segment as Wheaton and has bigger market cap.

  • Louis B

    The list does indeed look very different when pulled from today’s date. How about companies like Mitsubishi?

  • Wally

    PwC produced report will take a slant that panders to the investments held by them and associated investment companies. If you would like a self satisfying inflated value of your own stock and investments, better read a report that is closer to your investment house.

    Value is a matter of perception.

  • Tobias R

    Actually the newest PwC report is “Mine 2016: Slower, lower, weaker…but not defeated”, and the link is http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/energy-utilities-mining/mining/publications/mining-2016.html. But the current ranking and numbers are as cited above.

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