Why the Rush? What’s Driving the Surge in 2024–2025 Mining Megadeals

The mining sector is undergoing a dramatic consolidation. From January 2024 to mid-2025, mining companies announced or closed 18 deals over CA$1 billion, totalling approximately CA$47 billion. While mining M&A has always been cyclical, the past 18 months have marked a major shift in both the scale and frequency of large transactions. This boom surpasses the post-super-cycle peak of 2011-12 and is on track to set a two-decade record. But unlike earlier deal activity driven by optimism about rising commodity prices, this one is being fuelled by sharper pressures: geopolitical uncertainty, trade disputes, rising costs, supply gaps, strategic urgency and the accelerating shift toward clean energy. Companies aren’t speculating – they’re securing future output, cash flow and critical materials in a world that’s changing fast.

A Perfect Storm: The Forces Fuelling the Deal Frenzy

Three major forces are pushing mining companies to buy rather than build:

1. The Energy Transition and Copper’s Critical Role: The clean energy transition has made copper the most strategic metal of the decade. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the share of total demand for copper and rare earth elements will rise significantly over the next two decades to over 40% in a projected scenario that meets the Paris Agreement goals, driven by copper’s role in clean technologies like electric vehicles and storage, wind turbines, solar PV, electricity networks and hydropower and bioenergy. But supply is lagging. In 2021, global copper inventories hit a 15-year low, causing prices to steadily rise ever since, hitting an all-time high of US$5.24 per pound, or US$11,552 per metric ton, on March 26, 2025 – levels that supercharge profits for producers. Compounding the squeeze, the average timeline to open a new copper mine now exceeds 14 years. For many companies, that’s simply too long to wait.
2. Rising Project Costs – But Borrowing is Relatively Attractive: Major miners entered 2024 with record cash reserves. At the same time, falling interest rates reopened the debt market, allowing mining companies to borrow at rates below 5%. That matters because new mining projects are getting much more expensive. Recent brownfield projects in Latin America indicate a capital cost intensity of over US$23,000 per tonne of annual production, a sharp increase compared to historical averages. The result? This makes M&A a faster, less expensive, more certain and lower-risk way to secure mineral resources than building new mines, and low-cost funding provides the sector with the capacity to do it.
3. Reshaping Portfolios for the Future: Miners are actively restructuring – selling off older, carbon-intensive or non-core assets and reinvesting in future-facing materials. The result is a frenzied dash for tier‑one assets and a parallel wave of divestments to pay for the shopping spree. This is partly about efficiency, but also a hedge against the depletion of high-quality resources. Investors increasingly want exposure to clean-energy metals without a decade of development risk. Buying a producing asset offers instant and bankable cash flow and in many cases, ESG alignment. According to EY, 76% of mining executives are making divestments, while 54% are also acquiring – fuelling deal flow on both sides.

Gold: A Safe Haven in Uncertain Times

Gold, a hedge against economic uncertainty and a proven cash generator, continues to dominate global mining M&A activity, accounting for over US$26.54 billion across 62 deals in 2024 – 70% of global mining deal value. The driver is not just a lofty bullion price (averaging US$2,860/oz in Q1 2025), but gold’s unique value as a stable and reliable source of cash flow during times of volatility. Take these examples:

• Orla Mining / Newmont (March 2025): Orla’s US$850 million purchase of Newmont’s Musselwhite gold mine in Ontario vaulted it from single-asset to mid-tier producer overnight, unlocking immediate cash flow and accessing a skilled underground workforce. Newmont, in turn, freed up capital to focus on copper as part of its planned divestments to offload non-core assets and optimize its portfolio.
• Gold Fields / Gold Road Resources (announced May 2025): South Africa’s Gold Fields launched a A$3.7 billion (US$2.39 billion) acquisition of Australia’s Gold Road Resources, positioning it to eliminate inefficiencies and build critical consolidation in a booming sector.

Deals like this show that gold remains central to portfolio strength and resilience, especially when interest rates and markets are unpredictable.

Copper: The Metal Powering the Future

While gold may bring resilience and balance sheet strength, copper brings relevance and strategic leverage. Every part of the energy transition – from EVs and solar panels to transmission lines – relies on copper. Yet supply is increasingly constrained. Bloomberg NEF forecasts a 4.5 million tonne global supply gap by 2027. This supply crunch is triggering intense competition for mining assets with:

• Low carbon intensity (renewable energy, high‑grade minerals).
• Brownfield expansion potential (less regulatory uncertainty).
• Logistics advantages (rail or port proximity).

This prompted a surge in copper megadeals in 2024:

• BHP & Lundin Mining JV (Vicuña) (Chile/Argentina): US$3 billion to accelerate development of the cross-border Filo del Sol copper project.
• MMG / Cuprous Capital (Botswana): MMG’s US$1.9 billion acquisition of Cuprous, owner of the Khoemacau copper mine, having a 20-year life of mine in an emerging jurisdiction.
• Lundin Mining / SCM Minera Lumina Copper Chile (Chile): Strategic stake increase by Lundin to 70% in the high-grade, long-life Caserones copper mine.

Even BHP’s ultimately withdrawn US$49 billion bid for Anglo American illustrates the fierce appetite for copper assets.

Divest-to-Invest: Selling to Fund the Pivot

Some of the largest mining transactions have been motivated by actual or proposed strategic exits involving the sale of older or carbon-intensive assets to fund critical mineral, future-facing investments:

• South32 / Golden Energy and Resources / M Resources (August 2024): US$1.65 billion divestiture of South32’s Illawarra Metallurgical Coal mine to fund its zinc expansion in Arizona.
• Glencore / Teck Resources (July 2024):Glencore acquired 77% of Teck’s Elk Valley Resources steelmaking coal operations in July 2024 for US$6.93 billion, initially aiming to spin off its coal and carbon steel materials business. However, retention was eventually favoured by shareholders on the basis that it would enhance Glencore’s cash-generating capacity to fund opportunities in its transition metals portfolio (such as its copper growth project pipeline) and that steelmaking coal is expected to play a key role in supporting the infrastructure needed for the energy transition.

Geographies of Growth: Latin America and Africa

Latin America remains the epicentre of copper deal-making. S&P Global’s 2024 World Exploration Trends study shows Latin America again attracted the largest share of global metals-exploration spending – US$3.38 billion, up 2% year-over-year – even when iron-ore and coal projects are left out. Copper remains the dominant driver of Latin American transactions, with the 2024 BHP & Lundin Mining JV deal in Chile and Argentina serving as the marquee example. But that budget is also resulting in other headline mining M&A leading to Latin America being responsible for 17% of global megadeal value:

• Coeur Mining / SilverCrest Metals (Mexico): Coeur’s CA$2.3 billion cash-and-stock takeover of SilverCrest that folds the Las Chispas low-cost silver-gold mine into Coeur’s portfolio with expected significant free cash flow.

• Equinox Gold / Calibre Mining merger (North America and Nicaragua): US$2.5 billion all-share transaction that forms an Americas-focused gold company expected to produce about one million ounces of gold per year.

Meanwhile, Africa is the fastest-rising arena. Supported by government roll-out of the African Green Minerals Strategy and national beneficiation mandates, the continent is quickly emerging as one of the prime targets for the development of new mines to meet the demand for copper, lithium and others. The 2023-2024 period saw a 32.4% increase in lithium exploration allocations and a 23.6% increase in copper exploration allocations for the continent. Two African gold mine megadeals already added nearly US$3.5 billion to the 2024-25 ledger:

• AngloGold Ashanti / Centamin (Egypt): US$2.5 billion cash-and-share acquisition that brings the flagship Sukari gold mine under AngloGold’s control, adding a tier 1 asset to its portfolio and increasing its annual gold production.
• Zijin Mining / Newmont (Ghana): US$1 billion purchase of Newmont’s open-pit Akyem gold mine operation by Zijin, expanding Zijin’s West African footprint in a country with favourable mining policies and convenient access to transportation infrastructure.

The bottom line is that while North America and Australia still log more billion-dollar closings, Latin America offers the deepest copper pipeline, while Africa delivers the fastest growth and favourable policy momentum, making both regions pivotal to the next wave of energy-transition mining M&A.

Why Build When You Can Buy?

With mining project costs rising and approvals taking longer, greenfield projects are looking increasingly unappealing. S&P and EY both point to a future capital environment where financing is also harder to secure. And even where capital is available for new mine development, ESG requirements, regulatory hurdles, and stakeholder engagement processes introduce additional complexity, time, and unpredictability.

Acquiring existing mining assets, especially those already in production, offers a way around these risks – especially for public mining companies that are under pressure to demonstrate near-term growth to their shareholders. As a result, M&A offers a faster, less risky and often more cost-effective and certain path to resource expansion.

Joint Ventures: Sharing Risk, Speeding Up Results

Where outright acquisitions aren’t possible or practical, companies are teaming up through in‑district partnerships. Joint ventures are the rising stars of the megadeal landscape. JV structures enable miners to share infrastructure, split costs, achieve operational efficiencies, access in-country expertise, and navigate tricky regulatory or political environments together. Examples include:

• BHP & Lundin Mining JV (Vicuña) (closed Jan 2025): Two neighbouring copper corridor projects in Chile/Argentina with shared infrastructure resulting in cost savings estimated at US$540 million.

• General Motors / Lithium Americas JV (Thacker Pass) (Dec 2024): GM’s US$625 million investment in Nevada’s Thacker Pass secured it a future lithium supply and unlocked a US$2.26 billion government loan, lowering execution risk and strengthening the U.S. battery chain.

These structures are gaining traction as companies are looking to get complex projects off the ground quickly and collaboratively, particularly in regions with underdeveloped infrastructure.

New Money, New Models: Sovereigns and ESG-Linked Financing

Even amid tighter capital markets, significant funding continues – especially from mission-driven, long-horizon investors like sovereigns, export credit agencies and multilateral institutions:

• A sharp increase in sustainability-linked loans, where interest rates are tied to emissions, water or other ESG targets.
• EY flags capital availability as the top business risk for miners in 2025, often mitigated via ESG-linked financing structures.
• Sovereign and state-backed capital has been instrumental, co-investing in several major megadeals, reducing external debt needs and enabling bigger, riskier infrastructure-linked transactions.

This trend shows a broader shift – financial models are evolving to integrate climate and security objectives, leveraging public-sector capital to support strategic mining developments.

Conclusion: Buy Now or Pay Much More Later

The narrative behind 2024-2025’s mining megadeal wave is unmistakable: it is a catch-up cycle driven by visible supply gaps, capital surpluses and a strategic imperative to secure future-facing commodities now. Mining companies are racing to secure resources before they become scarcer, more expensive or politically difficult to access. The options are clear: buy tier-one assets now while financing costs are relatively attractive and balance sheets are strong or gamble on greenfield projects that may not deliver in time or on budget.

Mining companies aren’t hesitating. They’re buying – and buying big.

The message is clear: Buy now. The next cycle will be even more expensive.

This article was originally published by the Canadian Mining Journal.