The latest research from Harbour has indicated that mining companies could spend some $641 billion on 679 initiatives in the near-to-mid-term, with equipment being at the centre of these planned investment projects.
The Investment Pipeline report carried $552 billion of “valued initiatives” across this timeline, consisting of 458 projects, yet the forward pipeline the marketing advisory accounted for defined 679 initiatives, including those without a stated value, for that aggregate $641 billion.
Equipment, with a planned $465 billion spend, made up 84% of the total spend, with fixed processing plant alone tallying $303 billion. Mobile haulage fleets add $150 billion across many more, smaller decisions, Harbour noted.
Services lead on only $82 billion (anchored by $66 billion of contract mining), but attach to most forward-looking initiatives, because general engineering and engineering, procurement and construction management (EPCM) come up on nearly every build, according to Harbour.
Technology represents just 1% of direct spend ($4.7 billion), yet every valued dollar is within Harbour’s high-confidence Committed category, the research group notes. “We would note far more sits embedded, unpriced, inside equipment programs,” it added.
The pipeline is heavily back-loaded, which is helpful given the time needed for suppliers to influence decisions, Harbour says. “Execution value within 12 months is about $32 billion across the sub-six-month and six-12-month bands,” it adds. “The 12-18 and 18-24-month bands are comparatively thin ($12 billion and $25 billion). Then comes the wall: $342 billion – 62% of everything valued – sits in the 24-36-month band, corresponding to 2027-2028 execution, with a further $141 billion (26%) beyond 36 months as the mega-greenfields mature.”
Harbour says a cluster of newly approved projects are targeting 2027-2028 first production, with the early-stage development projects defaulting to two-to-three-year-plus horizons.
“The commercial significance lies in the offset between execution and procurement,” Harbour says. “Vendor evaluation runs one-to-three years ahead of execution depending on category – 18-30 months for processing plant, 24-36 months for EPCM, 12-24 months for mining contractors, 9-15 months for mobile fleet – so applying those offsets, engagement windows for essentially the whole 2027-2028 wall are open now for the long-lead categories.”
Yet, Harbour noted a caveat.
It stated: “Near-term bands are dominated by Committed brownfield and restart work (fast, contractor-heavy), while the wall mixes Committed mega-projects with Planned and Proposed ones whose specifications are still fluid – the highest-leverage moment for influencing scope.”
Photo is from the Woodsmith project in the UK, being developed by Anglo American (photo credit: Anglo American)