The Covid-19 pandemic is likely to lead to another casualty: the mega mine.
The volatility created by crises like Covid-19 is adding a layer of uncertainty to the development of large-scale projects that take a decade or more to progress and are highly capital intensive, according to Tom Albanese, the former chief executive officer of Rio Tinto.
This means that mining projects are likely to be developed over time in phases instead of over longer periods with less visibility, he told Fastmarkets during a webinar interview this week.
"These once-in-a-generation crises that now happen once every 10 years make it hard to develop a project or mine that takes five to 20 years in some cases. It just makes it that much harder for the new, big projects to be able to be sustained over that period of time because that volatility makes it harder to keep them running," he said.
"We'll hear more and more about phasing operations rather than starting with...