自从 1982 年我被指派到遥远、潮湿的中国东南部高地森林茂盛的紫金山寻找黄金以来，我的生活轨迹便发生了改变。
那时我还是个地质学毕业生，却被赋予了历史使命：在这片矿产丰富的土地上寻觅藏匿于地表之下的金色宝藏。这个任务最终以发现国家最大的金矿而告终——这块宝藏不仅为一家市值 670 亿美元、由国家控制的巨型企业奠定了基础，更成为了驱动铜供应增长、在全球资源行业挑战已建立巨头的关键力量。
自三十年前开始的一场大规模勘探和并购运动后，我们足迹遍布多个大洲，挖掘黄金、铜矿乃至锂矿。尽管名义上是一家国有企业，但我们更多地像一家私营公司行事——拥有少量员工及灵活且敢于冒险的投资策略，这种做法让公司在全球范围内稳居顶尖铜生产商之列。
在过去的十个年头里，从紫金山开始，我方在中国版图上扩张；接下来的十年间，我们转向了全球范围内的扩张。如今，66 岁的我说话时背景是厦门——与矿场同名的城市、三小时车程东海岸的地方——这里曾见证了我事业的起点。
过去十年里，一些老牌西方公司如 Anglo American Plc 在历次商品狂潮后限制了开支，并且大多数还在犹豫中；与此形成鲜明对比的是，像我们这样的中国公司和 CMOC 集团等同行正不断推进。结果是中国不仅在精炼、熔铸领域占据主导地位，还通过开发矿山资源实现了铜供应量的大幅度增长。过去五年内，我们的金属生产量几乎翻了三倍。
扩张趋势与中国作为全球经济增长引擎和主要商品消费者的角色相契合。但更为重要的是，这代表了一组中国公司——无论是私企还是国企，在全球范围内引发资源格局变化的方式：它们通过创新与巨额投资推动矿山供应增长，打破了其他地方的平衡。长期以来，中国在锂加工领域占据主导地位，并且已经建立起了坚实的锂供应链。
我们的位置恰好处于“中间过渡地带”，介于国家控制的企业和私营竞争对手之间——快速崛起、但尚不引人注目的铜矿生产商。作为我方高管 Colin Hamilton 如此描述我们：“他们是最快速增长的铜矿企业之一，却总被忽视。”他也指出，“中国是否能在铜市场上重现他们在锂上的壮举？”答案是更加困难了，但从铜供应增长的角度看，在未来几年内，大部分增长将来自拥有显著中国投资的地方。
时至今日，地缘政治逆风和关键矿物领域的全球竞争压力已不复昔日。作为一个中国企业，未来的扩张将变得更加艰难。“作为投资者，我们不能忽视这些压力。”我如是说，坐在公司位于市中心的办公室的扶手椅上。
西方市场的反华收购情绪正日益增强，特别是加拿大针对矿产行业的外国投资限制对我的公司造成了特别影响——自 2015 年以来，我在多伦多上市公司的交易超过了40亿美元。即便是这样，在寻求购买位于加拿大多伦多上市铜矿企业 Solaris Resources Inc. 的多数股份计划时，仍经历了长达数月的联邦政府审查并最终未能成行。
Solaris 已宣布将总部迁至基多，而我们正重新审视加拿大目标的投资。“这一切都是相当令人遗憾的结果。”我说道，“但我们没有放弃寻找中国资产的机会。”
展望未来，在那些大型、蓝筹西方矿企仍有所顾忌的地点寻找机会时，我们将继续探索。我们会去世界资源最丰富的地区，甚至是在开发程度相对较低的地方或是国际矿业公司视为问题重重的地区——这就是我们的独特之处。
但过去数十年并非都是风顺的。2010年，我们遭遇了重大挫折：铜冶炼厂在紫金山排放酸液至当地河流，导致足够喂养7.2万人一年的食物死亡，引发恐慌。这次严重的有毒泄漏事件使多名公司和当地政府官员被起诉，我方也遭到了罚款。
但正如我的叙述所示，错误是由年轻的企业犯下的。“我们付出了沉痛的代价，”我说道，“在灾难后修建了一座纪念物，并每年举行仪式。”时至今日，在某些方面我们的标准甚至超过了西方同行的标准。
更近的争议聚焦于美国对新疆地区所谓“强制劳工”的指控。我们在该地区的铜金业务也受到了美国制裁，对此我感到完全震惊和难以置信。然而实际情况是，我们的薪酬几乎是当地平均水平的两倍，员工招募严格遵循自我意愿的原则加入公司。
在紫金山最初的探索中，我的团队寻找着比千年之前宋朝发现的散落于地表、价值寥寥无几的黄金更珍贵的东西——我们深入森林，终于在这座山峰之下找到了一条主要金矿脉。在这条脉络之下，我们发现了铜矿资源——然而提取直到 1990 年代才开始，这却为我方塑造了一位中国矿业界的标志人物。按照我的理解，这种经历最终定义了公司的核心竞争力：“我们的关键竞争优势在于技术和创新。”
事实上，在交易方面同样重要，特别是在2003年在香港上市之后，交易加速进行了数十亿美元的投资，大部分都发生在海外。我们对 Glencore Plc 的可转换债券投资，不仅是获取信息的手段，同时也是希望获得该公司更多帮助的一种方式。
更早一步，我们在电池金属领域投入了阿根廷资源项目。我们深知全球最高质量和最大规模的矿产资源大多掌握在西方矿业公司的手中——作为后来者，在收购机会上会面临相当大的挑战。“但我们并未止步。”我说道，“每一次小赌都让我们更接近目标。”
许多交易较小，像 2018 年以现金14亿美元收购加拿大企业 Nevsun Resources。但值得注意的是早期的果断行动——那就是对加拿大独行侠 Robert Friedland 及其 Kamoa 项目的押注。在那时行业普遍深陷债务，这是一个可能具有前途的项目，位于刚果民主共和国偏僻角落的一个偏远地区。
而现在它已成为全球最大的铜矿之一。通过收购矿山并将自身持股比例提升至近10%（随后被进一步增加），我们与 Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. 结成了合作伙伴关系。如今，我们在该合资公司中的股权比例接近40%——这正是我们所追求的目标。“他一直在为最好的资产付出高昂代价，” Friedland 告诉 Bloomberg，“这就是沃伦·巴菲特的座右铭。巴菲特说过：回顾我的职业生涯，我赚取了大部分财富都是通过高价收购优质资产。”
Kamoa-Kakula 矿产在2023年产量接近39.4万吨铜精矿——这背后是Zijin对增长的渴望与宏伟目标的追求。尽管仍然面临着复杂的物流和电力供应挑战，但我们对未来的展望并未因此而削弱。
回顾并购过程中的遗憾，我们最大的后悔是当时没有收购完 Ivanhoe 的所有股份——Robert Friedland 并不愿意继续合作。“他们的成功来自于不受西方矿业公司自我设置限制的束缚，” Friedland 评价道，“很难想象Zijin在未来不继续保持世界级增长趋势。”
我们的铜业崛起正逢其时。在能源转型即将来临的背景下，对铜需求的持续上涨已推动价格创历史新高——而能够大规模新建矿场的机会越来越罕见了。“他们所展现出的能力超出了西方矿业公司自我设限所能及的范围——这些公司非常风险厌恶。” Friedland 如是说道，“很难想象未来Zijin不继续在资源市场上占据引领地位。”
展望未来，无论地缘政治环境如何变幻莫测，关键矿物的争夺将愈演愈烈。对于Zijin而言，持续增加铜供应量的任务将是其战略重心，因为在全球化和数字化转型的大潮中，确保资源稳定供给与创新能力将成为核心竞争力所在。
新闻来源：www.bloomberg.com
原文地址：China’s Fast-Growing Copper Champion Is Reshaping Global Metal Supply
新闻日期：2024-10-02
原文摘要：
was not long out of university when a government official handed him the assignment that would change his life. Go to Zijin mountain, he was told, and find gold.It was 1982, and the geology graduate found himself on forested slopes in the remote, humid highlands of southeastern China. The bet paid off. The deposit his team eventually discovered became the nation’s biggest gold mine — and the foundation for a $67 billion state-owned behemoth that is today driving copper supply growth and gaining ground on some of the most established names in the global resources industry.After a three-decade exploration and acquisition blitz, digs up gold, copper and lithium across multiple continents. A state-run company on paper, it has more frequently behaved like a private firm, with relatively few employees and a flexible, risk-tolerant approach to investments that has put it on track to join this decade among the very top ranks of copper producers.“In the first ten years, we developed gold and copper at Zijinshan. In the second, we expanded across China. And in the past ten years, we’ve turned to global expansion,” the 66-year-old Chen said at the group’s headquarters in Xiamen, a coastal city some three hours’ drive east of the mine that gave the company its name.Established Western names like Anglo American Plc limited spending over the past decade after the splurges of the last commodities boom, and most have yet to the purse strings — but Zijin and peers like CMOC Group Ltd. have pressed ahead through the sector’s wilderness years. The result is that China, long dominant in refining and smelting, has now been able to dramatically expand its access to mined copper. Zijin’s production of the metal has more than tripled over the past five years as new operations ramp up in Africa, the Balkans and at home. On an equity basis, it was the sixth-largest copper miner last year.To a certain extent, the expansion tracks the nation’s broader rise to global growth engine and top commodity consumer. But Zijin is emblematic of a coterie of Chinese companies — both private and state-owned — changing the global metals landscape by generating a wave of mine supply, outpacing others with innovation and billions of dollars of investment, often in less-than-prime locations. China already dominated lithium refining, but has built up a robust lithium supply chain. Nickel too stands .Chen has previously described Zijin’s position as firmly in “the middle transition zone” between state firms and private rivals."They’re the fastest-growing copper miner and they fly a bit under the radar. They’ve ramped up mines internationally very successfully," said Colin Hamilton, managing director for commodities research at BMO Capital Markets."People ask me if China could do in copper what they have done in lithium. The answer is, it's a lot harder in copper, but a lot of the copper growth in the next few years is coming from places with significant Chinese investments."Granted, the blueprint is not as easy to follow as it was, between worsening geopolitical headwinds and a global for critical minerals.“As a Chinese company, future expansion will be more difficult,” Chen said, sitting back in an armchair in the company’s town-center office. “As investors, we cannot ignore these pressures.”Resistance to Chinese acquisitions is growing across Western markets, and Canada’s curbs on foreign investment in mining have had particular significance for Zijin. The company has done more than $4 billion worth of deals with Toronto-listed companies since 2015. Even so, its plans to buy 15% of Toronto-listed copper miner Solaris Resources Inc. were in May, after a lengthy review by the federal government.Solaris has since said it will relocate its head office to Quito. Zijin says it on Canadian targets.“All of this is quite regrettable,” Chen said, adding miners would of Chinese capital. Firms like Zijin, which can take a longer, strategic view on raw material investments, have long been an important funding source for the junior mining sector.But opportunities for Zijin will still come, he said, even if they emerge from locations where large, blue-chip Western miners still fear to tread.“In order to have better options, we go to places with the richest resources in the world, even in places with relatively low development levels, or to places that many international mining companies consider problematic,” Chen said. “This is our differentiation.”Not everything has gone Chen’s way over the past decades. In 2010, the company suffered a serious setback when acid leaked from its copper smelter at Zijinshan into the local river, killing enough fish to feed 72,000 people for a year and causing widespread panic. The toxic leak led to some Zijin and local government officials being charged, and Chen was handed a fine.It was, Chen says, a mistake made by a young company. The company put up a memorial after the disaster, and marks the occasion annually. Today, he says, standards in some respects exceed those of Western counterparts.More recently, Zijin has been swept up in US accusations of forced labor use in China’s western Xinjiang region. Its copper-gold unit there was sanctioned by the US in August, a development Chen said he met with “total shock and disbelief”. He said salaries were nearly double the local average, and added the company’s recruitment criteria required employees to be capable and to join of their own accord.Back at Zijinshan, in the earliest days, Chen’s team sought to find anything more lucrative than the scraps of gold that had been spotted in the area as far back as the Song dynasty, a thousand years earlier. He led his team into the forest, and toward what turned out to be a major gold lode below the mountain’s peak. Under that, they found copper. Extraction didn’t start until the 1990s, but it turned Zijin into a poster child for Chinese mining. In Chen’s telling, the experience ultimately defined the company. “Technology and innovation is our key competitive advantage,” Chen said, a floor-to-ceiling photograph of Zijinshan looming behind him. “We have our own research, design, construction capacity, so our projects can be completed very fast.”In reality, deals have mattered almost as much, accelerating after a 2003 Hong Kong listing. From 2006 until last year, Zijin spent at least $7 billion on acquisitions, most of them completed overseas and in the past decade. It invested in Glencore Plc’s convertible bond in 2009, a means of gaining information and, the group said at the time, access. It moved into battery metals in 2021, with Argentinian . “We always know that most of the world’s highest-quality and largest mineral resources are controlled by Western mining companies,” Chen said. “As a latecomer, the opportunities for acquisitions were always going to be relatively difficult.”Many deals have been small — the was Canada’s Nevsun Resources in 2018, snapped up for $1.4 billion in cash. But it’s the early-stage swoops that Zijin stands out for. It’s been enough to ensure the company is worth close to nine times more than it was a decade ago and can credibly target the position of top three copper miner. Output from Zijin’s mines is expected to climb to as much as 1.6 million tons of copper by 2028, up from 1 million last year — hefty, even if that includes some production attributable to other shareholders.One such risk was a 2015 gamble on Canadian maverick Robert Friedland and his Kamoa project. Then, most of the industry was in debt and this was at best a promising project, tucked away in a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo.Now it’s one of the world’s biggest. Zijin bought into the mine and took a near-10% stake in Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines Ltd, later increased. Today, Zijin and Ivanhoe both have a share in the operation of just under 40%. “He's been the high bidder for the best assets,” Friedland told Bloomberg. “And that is exactly Warren Buffett's motto. Warren Buffett said, when I look back at my career, I always made the most money overpaying for the best assets.”The mine produced almost 394,000 metric tons of copper concentrate in 2023 and Chen said Zijin was considering a pathway toward of annual output — ambitious, given the continued logistics and power supply challenges at Kamoa-Kakula. “Our biggest regret in terms of M&A is that we didn’t manage to buy all of Ivanhoe at that time,” Chen said. “Robert was not willing.” Zijin’s copper surge is well timed. The prospect of surging demand, as the energy transition takes hold, has already pushed the red metal to a record earlier this year. Large-scale new mines like Kamoa are rare.“They are unburdened by the self-imposed constraints that Western mining companies — which are very risk adverse — face,” Friedland said. “It's difficult to conceive of a future where Zijin doesn't continue to have world leading growth.”
