Our strategy is to grow responsibly as a base metal mining company, providing superior returns to shareholders. This simple yet comprehensive strategy has delivered excellent results for our shareholders.
1. Long-term responsible growth
We are focused on increasing our copper reserves in a disciplined way. We plan to increase our reserves by advancing the Cobre Panamá project, continuing our exploration activities around the world and making new acquisitions if opportunities arise. At the same time, we will manage our balance sheet conservatively so we can finance our growth regardless of market conditions.
Over the last five years, we have nearly doubled copper reserves and resources. This was a 3.6 million tonne increase.
We are committed to continually improving our performance as a responsible corporate citizen while creating shareholder value. Creating safe workplaces, engaging with people in the communities where we operate and adhering to high environmental standards are all important to our future.
2. Superior returns
Providing superior returns to our shareholders is a key part of our strategy. We focus on operating effectively, assessing and managing risk to make sure we meet or exceed our production targets, controlling our costs and developing our human resources. Together, these activities strengthen our long-term returns relative to our peers.
3. Base metal mining
Our business model focuses on base metals, primarily copper, which we continue to believe is a very attractive business over the long term.
As populations and industries grow, so does the demand for copper, and the pace of industrialization, especially in China and India, has kept global demand for copper high over the last several years.
We also see limitations to the rate of growth in copper production. The supply of new copper production is expected to come mainly from large deposits. Developing them successfully will require significant investment and resources to deal with lengthy permitting and challenging community engagement processes. This bodes very well for the price of copper in the future, particularly since several copper projects have been cancelled or delayed in response to the downturn in the markets, making it even more uncertain whether the supply of copper will meet growing global demand over the next five to 10 years.
We believe it is prudent to remain focused on copper as we are confident that copper prices will recover – the question is how quickly. Fortunately, we have low cost operations, which means we can continue to operate and prepare for the future by advancing the Cobre Panamá project, so we should be in an excellent position to benefit when copper prices rise.