Forget the rhetoric, confront the realities: Ro Dhawan
- 2 December 2025
If the world – including the mining world – is serious about responsible and resilient mineral supply chains it needs to get, well, serious, says International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) CEO Rohitesh Dhawan. “We must go beyond the headlines and confront the real forces at play,” he said at the opening of Resourcing Tomorrow 2025.
Those forces included the economics and geopolitics that made mineral processing uncompetitive without real support, energy and carbon pricing systems that metals were allergic to, and cultural barriers in mining holding back innovation.
Dhawan said as headlines shouted about soaring mineral demand, looming shortages and an urgent need for new mines, and critical minerals sat atop G7, G20, IEA, UN and more than 100 country agendas, metal plants were closing and new projects were stalling.
“The entire mining sector is valued at less than one-third of Nvidia,” he said.
“Something doesn’t add up.
“I believe the disconnect comes down to three paradoxes ... [and an] uncomfortable truth.”
The three paradoxes were the contradictions of demand without supply, of green ambition without affordable energy, and mining’s internal paradox of “urgent need without innovation adoption”.
The uncomfortable truth: “Western free-market rules are clashing with state-directed competitors. [Western] governments must choose – embrace industrial policy or accept ongoing [supply chain] vulnerability,” said Dhawan.
The ICMM boss used case studies to illustrate his mining “landscape of paradox”.
America, he said, had an appetite for copper that was only going to grow.
“The US consumes two million tonnes of copper a year [and] demand will double within a decade,” Dhawan said.
“Yet the country has just two operating smelters.
“China has 200.
“You might think Canada can fill the gap. Except Canada is no friend of the US right now and has even fewer smelters. Its last one, the Horne smelter, is reportedly at risk of closure.
“How is it that the world’s largest economy, with the world’s most predictable long-term copper demand, cannot secure supply of a metal it considers essential? The answer is brutally simple: economics.”
Dhawan said collapsed copper refinery treatment charges meant owners were paying mines for the privilege of refining their concentrate while absorbing the cost.
“It is like your dry cleaner paying you to valet your shirts,” he said.
“Why? Because smelters need feedstock to survive. And global concentrate is tight. Several major mines are underperforming or offline.
“With smelter utilisation at a record-low 75%, refiners are desperate. Considering the lack of new mines and long lead times this is the new normal.
“State-backed players, especially in China, can absorb these losses. Western smelters cannot. Neither can most of the producer countries increasingly demanding in-country beneficiation of minerals.”
Dhawan said the result was a “critical” metal starved of new mines and smelting capacity at a time of soaring US demand and high prices.
“The situation in Europe is arguably even more dire,” he said.
And grimmer again for European aluminium.
“Europe produces five million tonnes of aluminium and consumes three times that amount,” said Dhawan.
“The gap between demand and supply rises sharply to 2030 and beyond.
“Prices are strong: up 45% since 2020. Aluminium and its precursors are on the EU’s Critical Raw Materials list. You’d expect a thriving industry. Instead, companies are shutting extrusion lines and cutting midstream production.”
High energy prices, Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and US tariffs were the destroyers.
“Aluminium is solid electricity,” Dhawan said. “And Europe has some of the most expensive power in the world. That alone makes European production €400-to–€600 per tonne more expensive than in China or the US.”
Europe’s “well-intentioned but flawed CBAM” aimed to protect European industry from dirtier imports but its current design risked doing the opposite, Dhawan said.
“Scrap is treated as zero-emissions, enabling foreign producers to over-declare scrap content without robust verification. This could give them a 3–7% price advantage over EU producers,” he said.
“Indirect emissions are excluded entirely so carbon-heavy grids abroad go unpenalised while EU producers pay the full cost of electricity-related emissions.
“The result [is that] European producers who emit 60% less CO2 per tonne are being undercut by higher-carbon imports.”
Dhawan said there wasn’t much Europe could do about US tariff policy, but energy prices and the CBAM design weren’t helping. The broader lesson was that no metal industry could survive, let alone compete, without cheap, reliable energy.
“In a geopolitically fractured world it is even more important,” he said.
On the internal demand for innovation, Dhawan said miners had never needed it more.
“This should be the golden age of mining innovation,” he said.
“[But] very innovator I’ve spoken to in the past year tells the same story ... We cannot get companies to bring us on site.
“What is unsafe is refusing to evolve while pressures intensify around us”
“Mining chronically under-invests in R&D but the deeper issue is cultural.
“A well-intentioned but counterproductive view of risk. New equals risky. And in an industry rightly obsessed with safety, risky is often a conversation-ender.
“But the truth is, innovation is not inherently unsafe. What is unsafe is refusing to evolve while pressures intensify around us.
“This is cultural work – deep, long-term, values-driven change. And it needs to start now.”
