Capital, Environmental Risks: Top Mining Concerns of 2025

Raising capital and environmental stewardship will be the main concerns of mining companies in 2025, according to EY’s Top 10 Business Risks and Opportunities for Mining and Metals Companies in 2025 report. The report also underscores the growing prominence of resource nationalism as a significant concern for the sector.

According to EY, capital management is the main risk for mining and metals companies in 2025, with investors maintaining a strong focus on how they will allocate funds. To address this, companies are pursuing mergers and acquisitions, divesting non-core assets, and expanding their financing strategies to include multiple sources of capital. With macroeconomic challenges expected to persist, miners are exploring partnerships, joint ventures, and integration strategies to mitigate risks on large-scale projects. “But enabling the investment required to meet demand could call for more fundamental changes to the sector’s approach to financing, thinking beyond yield and investing capital to create long-term value,” reads the report.

Environmental stewardship is expected to be the second main concern for mining companies, dropping from its position as the top concern for 2024. Mining companies increasingly focus on creating a positive environmental legacy, prioritizing waste management and water conservation through innovative projects, says EY’s report. Nearly half of the survey respondents expressed confidence in meeting the International Council on Mining and Metal’s (ICMM) environmental obligations.

Geopolitical risks rose from seventh place in 2024 to become the third-most significant concern for 2025, driven primarily by the growing influence of resource nationalism. According to EY, this trend is reshaping the investment landscape, impacting tax policies and ownership rights. The report highlights the need for partnerships with local stakeholders and innovative strategies to navigate complex regulatory environments and mitigate associated risks.

The remaining risks identified by EY for 2025 include workforce, innovation, supply chain disruption, decarbonization, license to operate, cost and productivity management, and social value.

Main Changes and New Additions 

Resource and reserve depletion are a new challenge identified for 2025, occupying the fifth position, reads the report. EY says companies must continue to develop better ways to extract and optimize critical minerals to meet increasing demand while protecting the environment. “This complicated problem is driven by interwoven factors. Declining ore grades increase the costs of extraction. Exploration budgets are up, but so are costs, and fewer discoveries are being made,” highlights the report.

Another potential problem are new projects, which ranked eighth in the report. The mining sector faces the challenge of meeting demand by extracting more mineral ores over the next 30 years than in the past 70,000 years. The barriers to new projects include regulatory delays, high capital costs, and a shortage of skilled workers, which make timely project delivery difficult, says EY. Additionally, rising mining royalties and taxes in some markets pose further obstacles. 

Although governance, cyber risks, digital strategies, and workforce issues dropped out of the Top 10 risks in 2025, EY warns that these areas remain critical, particularly given the ongoing talent shortages and the increasing integration of digital tools across the industry. “For many companies, the risks and opportunities presented by cyber and digital are now integral to business as usual, not warranting particular attention. However, the de-prioritization of governance was unexpected and perhaps worrying, given miners are progressing new projects in countries with potentially weaker regulatory oversight,” reads EY’s report.