2025 marks a decade of transformation, teamwork, and making a difference at South32.
As we mark our 10-year anniversary, we are reflecting on a journey that has seen us turn a suite of assets into a strong, resilient, and purpose-driven business with a focus on creating value for our people, stakeholders, and the communities we proudly partner with and operate in.
Since we were established in 2015, we’ve seen significant changes to our portfolio, to the industry we’re a part of and the world around us, but our purpose has always remained the same:
To make a difference by developing natural resources, improving people's lives now and for generations to come. We are trusted by our owners and partners to realise the potential of their resources.
Our purpose has been underpinned by a simple strategy – focused on optimising the performance of our operations, unlocking potential through our people and projects and identifying opportunities to sustainably reshape our business for the future.
We believe that the sustainable development of natural resources can change people’s lives for the better.
We make meaningful contributions to the social and economic development of countries and communities where we operate through the taxes and royalties we pay, employment opportunities we create, and suppliers we work with.
Our social investment is an important part of the value we create in our communities.
Over the past 10 years we have invested around US$200 million in community projects. This funding has been distributed across four primary areas: education and leadership, good health and social wellbeing, economic participation and natural resource resilience.
Working to build trust in our local communities is central to how we operate; we engage collaboratively with Indigenous, Traditional and Tribal Peoples to preserve cultural heritage and advance opportunities for economic participation and social inclusion.
As stewards of the land and water where we operate, we aim to minimise our impacts on the natural environment around our local communities and operations.
Across the past 10 years, we have focused on sustainably reshaping our business towards base metals such as zinc, copper and aluminium – essential for infrastructure development, consumer electronics and automotive industries.
As the world’s energy transition accelerates, so do the projections for demand of copper and zinc. Zinc demand is forecasted to outpace production by approximately 4 million tonnes by 2033, and copper demand is expected to grow considerably due to its use in wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles.
In 2022 we acquired a 45 per cent stake in the Sierra Gorda copper mine in Chile which provided us with immediate exposure to copper. Meanwhile, we have exited the energy and metallurgical coal markets, through the divestments of South Africa Energy Coal in 2021 and Illawarra Metallurgical Coal in Australia in 2024.
In 2018 we completed the acquisition of the Hermosa project in Arizona, one of the most exciting base metals projects in the industry.
The Hermosa project includes the Taylor zinc-lead-silver deposit, the Clark battery-grade manganese deposit, and a highly prospective regional land package. The development of Taylor is underway and has the potential to be a top 10 global producer of zinc.
Climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time.
As a global mining and metals company, we have an important role to play in responding to the risks and opportunities of climate change – to produce minerals and metals critical for the energy transition, and to do so in a way that seeks to contribute value to society and minimise environmental impact.
Transitioning our portfolio to supply those critical minerals and metals is only one part of the story. We also have a role to play in decarbonising our operations and contributing to the decarbonisation of the value chain.
We have set a target to halve our operational GHG emissions (Scope 1 and Scope 2) by 2035 from our FY21 baseline. We also have a long-term goal to achieve net zero GHG emissions across all scopes (i.e. Scope 1, 2 and 3) by 2050.
Learn more about our approach to climate change here.
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