Recycling is a must for the mining industry, BHP boss says
London | BHP boss Mike Henry says the private sector must turn recycling into a meaningful source of metals for the world, in a possible signal that BHP could join other big miners in the scrap recycling business.
BHP CEO Mike Henry. Bloomberg
Speaking just two months after Rio Tinto announced plans to spend close to $1 billion growing its footprint in the aluminium recycling industry, Mr Henry told an International Energy Agency summit in Paris on Thursday that “there is an opportunity and need for continued lifting of the rates of recycling”.
He said iron ore mines were increasingly yielding ore with a lower grade, or percentage of metal. Moreover, newly discovered and developed iron ore deposits were also “on average, incrementally lower-grade”.
“This means more ore needs to be mined just to stand still,” he said in a keynote speech to the summit’s opening plenary. Recycling would “reduce the need for fresh metal units, and therefore the amount of mining required”.
“It is now for the private sector to turn that into reality,” he said.
Rio Tinto in July bought a $US700 million ($1 billion) half-stake in Matalco, a Canadian producer of recycled aluminium products, to develop a joint venture.
Glencore is also a player in recycling, extracting and marketing critical metals such as copper, nickel, cobalt and zinc from end-of-life electronics and lithium-ion batteries. It has recycling facilities in North America, South America and Europe.
AngloAmerican has described “circularity” as a key part of its “journey from mining and metals company to material solutions provider”, and has a pilot project running in the nickel sector.
BHP has taken a more watchful approach, making small strategic investments that appear intended to
Read more on afr.com
