What one global operator is doing to tackle not only water management and sustainability, but the broader ideas of a reduced carbon footprint and the digital future.
by Donna Schmidt
With operations in North and South America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia, Anglo American epitomizes the truly global mining operator, primarily focused on copper, premium iron ore and crop nutrients. It makes sense, then, that even the smallest decisions this miner makes on how it does business have ripple effects that are wide, all-encompassing, and impactful to how both it and its peers do business.
Within its mission for responsible production, Anglo American has positioned the pillars of decarbonization, sustainability and the implementation of digital technologies at the forefront, and at the center of those efforts is its FutureSmart Mining initiative.
About FutureSmart Mining
“By integrating our innovative approach to sustainability with our technical expertise, FutureSmart Mining helps us reach our sustainability ambitions and deliver the significant growth opportunities in our portfolio, as well as others that we aim to secure over time,” the company recently said in a NAM interview on its progress with the program.
It is, quite literally, a blueprint for reinventing mining, which it is achieving with deep technological innovation, radical sustainability commitments, and a fundamentally different relationship with the environment and the communities it works in. Rather than being defined by the outlines of a single program, it is an effort to transform how business is done – from the mine to the delivery of the minerals it extracts, all while prioritizing its impact and taking responsibility for its work.
“By integrating our innovative approach to sustainability with our technical expertise, FutureSmart Mining helps us reach our sustainability ambitions and deliver the significant growth opportunities in our portfolio, as well as others that we aim to secure over time.”
The mission from a sustainability viewpoint is three-fold: to be a trusted leader, to deliver positive environmental outcomes and to be a catalyst for enduring contributions in the areas where its operations are located.
“The way in which metals and minerals are produced is becoming ever more important to all stakeholders, from communities close to mines and processing plants, all the way through to the end consumer – and rightly so,” the spokesperson said.
The cores of FutureSmart Mining
Among the main technological ideas of FutureSmart Mining are the following:
Hydraulic Dewatered Stacking (HDS) is a tailings management system designed to make storage safer and dramatically reduce water loss.
Specifically, HDS makes use of fines-free sand rejects from coarse particle flotation to enhance and accelerate drainage and consolidation of the tailings to increase density and safety. When it completed its large-scale demonstration in late 2024, a second geotechnical site investigation was completed in the second quarter of last year to confirm the desaturated nature of the facility.
The company’s focus in 2025 for HDS was on the design, construction and assembly of a new sand placement unit that can place sand berms at more than 250 tonnes per hour (solids). At press time, testing was still pending but scheduled for this year. Studies are also ongoing to consider the full or partial implementation of HDS at Anglo American’s copper sites.
SandLix is next; it is a low energy, low water heap leaching process that unlocks value from complex or low grade copper ores.
The technology is still advancing toward commercialization, Anglo American confirmed, but will offer a way to treat low-grade, complex copper ores with significantly lower energy and water use than conventional processes like flotation. It has made it through a structured scale-up program, where it demonstrated consistently high performance from laboratory trials through to pilot-scale testing.
Early laboratory work delivered extraction rates of 80–90% within 250 days across multiple ore types, the miner said, which subsequently led to the development of a Containerised Heap Leach Reactor 400 times larger than laboratory testing scale to enable the testing of 50-tonne samples. The pilot columns in South Africa confirmed excellent scalability and will soon be set up in Chile.
Last year, the operator tested a 15,000-metric-tonne heap prototype at El Soldado, Chile, which demonstrated commercial-scale fluid and heat dynamics and confirmed key geotechnical design criteria. Work is now underway on a commercial-scale system demonstration to confirm process integration and continuous operation.
Coarse Particle Recovery, or CPR, is Anglo American’s flotation approach that increases throughput, cuts energy use, and improves water recovery to both improve recovery and enable early rejection of coarse waste. The technology is already part of the miner’s El Soldado and Quellaveco operations. A processing unit optimization program at Quellaveco significantly enhanced the performance of the CPR circuit during the last quarter of 2025.
Also part of Anglo American’s technological portfolio for FutureSmart Mining is Sensing, an in-pit sensor to support greater real-time ore selectivity; the technique has already been applied to a Proof of Concept in its premium iron ore operations to mitigate variable geology in run-of-mine ore.
Also, it is working hard on its Envusa Energy project. The Koruson 2 cluster, located close to the border of the Northern and Eastern Cape in South Africa, is a landmark renewable energy development by Envusa, the joint venture between Anglo American and EDF power solutions, which is set to deliver large-scale wind and solar energy solutions in South Africa.
Koruson 2 comprises the 240-MW Mooiplaats Solar PV project and the Umsobomvu and Hartebeeshoek wind projects at 140-MW each. Both Mooiplaats and Umsobomvu are complete and already partially energized and delivering energy into the grid. They are expected to reach full commissioning and commercial operations this year.
Other initiatives include the Impact Finance Network, Project Earthstone, Nature Accelerator and Smart Protein.
As Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad noted recently, it is the company’s sustainability strategy that underscores what FutureSmart means for it and the industry’s future worldwide.
“We recently updated this strategy – still underpinned by the three familiar themes that have shaped our approach since 2018: building trust as a corporate leader, contributing to a healthy environment, and helping create thriving communities – and now with a tailored approach which accommodates distinct local contexts and balances global targets with business-specific targets, recognizing that one size rarely fits all,” he said.
“Our commitment to producing the metals and minerals that the world so urgently needs, and doing so responsibly, is at the heart of everything we do.”
ABOUT ANGLO AMERICAN
Anglo American operates a network of large mining hubs spread across North and South America as well as Europe, Africa and Australia, each shaped by the geology of the region. It also has a majority ownership in diamond miner De Beers.
One of its flagships in North America is the Gahcho Kue mine in the Northwest Territories of Canada. A joint venture between De Beers (51%) and Mountain Province Diamonds (49%), it is one of the world’s highest-grade new diamond mines.
In September 2025, Anglo American announced an agreement to combine the company with Teck Resources through a merger of equals to form Anglo American which it says will create a global critical minerals powerhouse headquartered in Canada, with a global operational and commercial footprint.