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”.
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. It has also worked with US copper cable and wire manufacturer Southwire to track how the metals flow through downstream supply chains.But the company’s stated focus remains primary production, even though Mr Henry told the IEA critical minerals summit that new iron ore deposits were “increasingly hard to find, often deeper, and generally smaller”.
Mr Henry said this had its own challenges, particularly the confusing proliferation of environmental, social and governance standards used to benchmark companies. “BHP’s estimate is that under a plausible 1.5 degree scenario, the copper industry could require around $US250 billion in growth capital over the next seven years to 2030. That is over and above sustaining capital,” he said.