In the lead up to what is set to be a record Future Minerals Forum 2025 this week in Riyadh, IM Editorial Director, Paul Moore, met with His Excellency Vice Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources for Mining Affairs Eng. Khalid Al-Mudaifer, for a deep dive into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s vision for the future of its mining and metals industry, and what has already been achieved

Q How has Vision 2030 progressed from a mining and minerals point of view and can you give some examples of what has been achieved to date?

Vision 2030 was first announced eight years ago as a blueprint made by a visionary, young leader to change the face of the Kingdom by diversifying our economy and reducing dependence on oil; and at the same time creating a more vibrant society and becoming a regional and global economic powerhouse. It was a profound vision, and has already delivered several achievements specifically from a mining and minerals point of view. The mining specific strategy was launched in 2018 and since then we have delivered a major transformation both for our sector and for the wider mining and minerals industry. We have completely overhauled our laws and regulations related to mining and minerals, making it much more transparent and providing for greater security of tenure. At the same time we have made the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources much more investor centric – meeting regularly with potential investors at events and conferences around the world, both financial and major mining houses, to see what their requirements and needs are to invest in Saudi Arabia’s mining industry. We have made huge progress with our regional geoscience survey of 600,000 km2 – already 62% of this is complete and uploaded into our world-class geoscience database. This is already well regarded globally as being one of the best of its kind.

IM Editorial Director, Paul Moore with His Excellency Vice Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources for Mining Affairs Eng. Khalid Al-Mudaifer

We have also transformed our digital application process making us one of the most advanced E-government departments globally in mining – you can apply easily through our Ta’adeen Platform, which is dedicated to facilitating the procedures for issuing and renewing mining licences, and inquiring about available mining sites. Plus we have established a US$182 million mineral exploration incentive programme where explorers can have up to 25% of exploration costs covered by the Kingdom. Then up to 75% of actual developments costs can be covered through our Saudi Fund for Development which can include feasibility studies as well as construction itself. And we are offering a number of opportunities relating to known mineralised areas for direct implementation through competitive bids and licensing to provide easy and fast access to lands. In 2023, we released over 1,000 km2 of prospective lands through competitive licencing, and in 2024 over 9,000 km2. For 2025 the target is almost 50,000 km2. In 2024 for the first time we also began competitive licencing for larger mineralised belt areas which included almost 5,000 km2 across both the Jabal Sayid and Al-Hajjar sites. The process is straightforward and winners get the available licences on day 2. This has all resulted in growth of 350% in our exploration licences being awarded – taking our mineral exploration investment spend from one of the lowest in the world per square kilometre before 2020 and has now grown 40% year on year since 2021.

Looking at our leading national mining company, Ma’aden, it has announced new gold deposits south of its existing Mansourah Massarah gold mine amounting to over 10 Moz of new reserves. And we have attracted new technology related to exploration from some of our major mining company investors – these include the remotely-operated soil sampling robot, NOMAD, from ERG and SK Godelius; and the Typhoon, Ivanhoe Electric’s proprietary electrical geophysical surveying technology. We have also seen a lot of drone geophysics and satellite imagery being used in the Kingdom’s mineral exploration sector. We actively encourage the use of new technologies. What about the next steps beyond exploration into actual mining? A good indicator of this activity is mining licences being issued – and these have grown by 2.5 times since our transformation began and since the new mining law came into force in 2021 – in the past we saw five to six per year – today this has increased to 20 per year. But of course this transition from exploration to full production mines takes time and in some cases decades. And added to that the number of junior and major mining companies tendering for our mining licences has increased which indicates the potential. To give an example – in 2022 we tendered the Khnaiguiyah mines where zinc and copper deposits are estimated at around 26 Mt – this was won by the Mexico Resources PLC and Ajlan & Bros Mining Company consortium who have discovered much more mineralisation than initially expected in the years since.

Q You mentioned global mining players – and investors in Saudi include the likes of Barrick, Ivanhoe and Vedanta – what role are they playing and how important is that cooperation?

Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabian businesses themselves represent a partnership opportunity – and we built our oil and gas strength at Aramco as well as our petrochemical sector at SABIC based on cooperation through JVs and partnerships. And in aluminium, the Ma’aden business was built up working together with Alcoa; and in phosphate with Mosaic. We have been a target for significant investment and trading in the resources sector therefore for many decades both due to the strength of our resource base but also our strategic position between Africa, Europe and Asia. You mentioned Vedanta which aims to invest $2 billion in significant copper projects, one of the most crucial minerals in the global energy transition, within the Kingdom. An MoU was recently signed with the Ministry of Investment and Ministry of Industries & Mineral Resources to set up a 400,000 t/y greenfield copper smelter & refinery and a 300,000 t/y copper rod project. You will also see many big mining names in the lists of qualified bidders for the mentioned inaugural mineralised belt competitive licensing round – including Zijin Mining, First Quantum Minerals, Hancock Prospecting, Vedanta and IGO. So, partnership is part of our legacy and our present, and central to our business relationships around the world. We actively welcome it and it is actually the norm not the exception. In mining, the Jabal Sayid JV underground copper mine between Ma’aden and Barrick is a great example of mining specific partnership success. Today, the mining companies investing in Saudi also have the option to work with Saudi companies in partnership or to go it alone with 100% ownership.

Ma’aden’s phosphate operations are globally important and in the coming years metals mining in the Kingdom will grow in size and world significance  

Q What about investments by Ma’aden and other Saudi companies in mining and metals assets outside of Saudi Arabia?

This is also part of our Vision 2030 strategy for minerals. We are already the fourth largest net importer of minerals and metals in the world – about US$50 billion annually. Our national industrial strategy covers 12 sectors of which minerals and metals is one but most of these sectors will require minerals supply. And of course we have very large mega and giga gateway and urban development projects underway including NEOM which incorporates The Line, as well as others like Roshn, Qiddiya, Murabba and others that will be large mineral and metal consumers.

In December, we won both the bid the host World Expo 2030 in Saudi Arabia in Riyadh and we were confirmed as the host nation for the 2034 FIFA World Cup – both of which will require additional very large infrastructure investments – again requiring big metals and minerals inputs. Overall there are some US$2 trillion of mega and gigaprojects underway or planned in the Kingdom with huge requirements for not just cement and the associated limestone quarrying but also copper, steel, aluminium, zinc, lithium, gold and other materials. So we are looking to strategically secure some of this minerals supply to ensure we will have access to what we need at a competitive price – this includes more downstream processing of minerals to final products within the Kingdom – to become a global and regional mineral processing hub and are looking to attract US$100 billion of investment for this specific purpose by 2035 and US$32 billion has already been achieved and is in development or in construction, including the mentioned Vedanta copper processing initiative.

We are building on our competitive advantages of our location, infrastructure and investment capacity. We have 38,800 km2 of coastline lands in the east as well as a much more extensive area in the west between Asia and Africa where our Red Sea Project is located. And we have a world class power grid and road network. Power is crucial for mineral processing as aspects like comminution are so energy intensive – plus it will be green energy as we have committed to have 50% of our power generated from renewable sources by 2030, mainly low cost solar, with the remainder gas-fired. So as a result our metals will be greener as well.

But we also recognise all of this will not be enough to satisfy our minerals and metals needs. To address internal minerals processing assets and to source minerals from outside the Kingdom, we have established the National Minerals Program, which aims to secure and follow up the Kingdom’s mineral needs, develop plans and strategies, provide industrial supplies of mining raw materials, and ensure the continuity of its supply. And we have set up Manara Minerals Investment Company, a new venture between Ma’aden and the Public Investment Fund (PIF) to invest in mining assets globally and support the development of resilient global supply chains. Manara’s investments already include a major 10% equity position in Vale Base Metals focused on securing access to strategic minerals, including nickel, copper, and cobalt from Brazil, Indonesia and Canada.

Major steelmakers like Essar Group, Baosteel and Tosyali are already developing new steel plants in Saudi Arabia. To conclude, we have an interest to invest in minerals supply and downstream processing both inside and outside the Kingdom, and aspects of Vision 2030 are enabling both.

Q You mentioned the importance of technology in mineral exploration – what about bringing mineral processing and mining technology into Saudi Arabia through ventures like that between Ma’aden and Hexagon on the region’s first digital mine?

The mining and minerals sector faces persistent challenges that are become even more marked due to the increasing demand for minerals and critical minerals in particular. This includes a lack of exploration spending and exploration efficiency, with very few Tier 1 deposit discoveries – as well as a serious lack of trained and experienced people, with many geologists, mining engineers and operators close to retirement with noone coming up to replace them. Working in remote mining operations is not a high priority for most younger people today when they are considering careers. There are also increasing environmental, sustainability and social license to operate factors to consider in mining today. But these challenges are also bringing new opportunities for technology and the attention from governments on mining is higher than it has ever been, especially relating to critical minerals strategies. AI is playing an ever greater role in exploration and mining – in speeding up efficiency and processes. Digital twins and machine learning are also transforming the mineral processing sector upstream, while downstream, the latest ore sorting, leaching and filtration technologies are transforming the waste and water management aspects of mining.

In mining fleets, autonomy and operator assistance are playing a key role, including things like collision avoidance and fatigue management – plus remote control operation and monitoring as well as predictive maintenance. Many Tier 1 mines and concentrators today are operated from a distance at remote operations centres. Technology in mining is agile – we need the major players to be involved in Saudi Arabia, including those already working with us like Hexagon and many others but also some of the innovative smaller companies as well as academia. In 2023 as an example, OffWorld and Ma’aden signed a Memorandum of Understanding to initiate the first deployment of autonomous industrial mining robots in Ma’aden’s underground mines. We have also attracted a number of service companies to the Kingdom – which includes greater investment by geochemistry lab groups such as MSALABS, SGS, ALS and others. As a Ministry we are facilitating venture capital funds and funding to help drive mining technology investment and create a start-up ecosystem in Saudi Arabia. And we are seeking to establish mining centres of excellence – we have already set up an AI Center of Excellence for Manufacturing & Mining. And we are looking at new sources for minerals – membrane-based technology developed by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has already been used by its spin off company Lithium Infinity LLC (LiHyTech), in partnership with Aramco and Ma’aden, to directly extract lithium from brine in Aramco’s oil fields and there are plans to launch a commercial pilot program for direct extraction soon.

Q Projects like NEOM are primarily construction focused but are still using a lot of skilled operators and contractors in bulk earthworks, quarrying and infrastructure – will this also help to create a talent pool for mining operations as they develop?

Yes, there are a lot of synergies between our mega and giga projects and mining. Many aspects of earthmoving are the same whether it is in construction of mining. NEOM is a zero-carbon emissions objective project, so also shares a lot of goals with mining where major miners, Ma’aden included, have set decarbonisation and sustainability goals. Both industries use similar trucks, excavators, explosives and geotechnical tools with a lot of the same engineering capacity and knowledge. And we have seen investment from specialist companies with involvement in both sectors – a good example being rock boring and drilling services provider Master Drilling. We are also getting into heavy equipment manufacturing ourselves to meet the demands of the construction and mining sector, a great example being the new Saudi PIF company, Alat. Structured around three pivotal domains – electrification, heavy equipment for construction and mining, and components – Alat is set to play a vital role in advancing Vision 2030. It is contributing to the electrification and construction sectors, reinforcing local industrial capacity and has a diverse portfolio encompassing grid technology, gas turbines, and heavy construction equipment.