In its third year, the latest report finds that metals and mining market capitalisation reached a record $3.7 trillion, approximately 230% higher than in 2015, while EBITDA exceeded US$0.8 trillion and average EBITDA margins reached 27%. Yet metals and mining revenues grew by only around 1% in 2025, with volumes largely flat, labour productivity unchanged, and capital productivity declining.
Instead, a shift toward higher-margin commodities, particularly gold and copper, helped drive margin expansion. Gold prices rose 45% year-on-year, overtaking steel and thermal coal in the industry’s EBITDA pool for the first time. Returns have also diverged sharply over the past decade: between 2015 and 2025, gold producers generated an 8.1x increase in total shareholder returns, compared with 6.3x for copper and 2.2x for nickel.
Michel Van Hoey, Senior Partner at McKinsey said: “The industry entered 2026 from a position of financial strength, but the drivers of that performance matter. Higher commodity prices, particularly for gold, have supported strong returns, while underlying growth has remained modest. The opportunity is to translate today's financial strength into investment decisions that reflect where future demand and value creation are shifting.”
The strong financial performance comes as materials play an increasingly strategic role in geopolitics, with governments extending efforts to secure supply through strategic stockpiles, domestic investment and trade restrictions. These restrictions increasingly cover scrap and recycled materials, creating new pressures for companies dependent on imported feedstocks. Physical trade disruptions, including in the Strait of Hormuz, have further exposed supply-chain vulnerabilities.
Michel Foucart, Partner at McKinsey said: “Recent events have reinforced the importance of resilience across the materials value chain. Diversifying mining supply is one part of the equation, but the availability and economics of refining, processing and recycled feedstocks are equally important. For companies, understanding how these different parts of the value chain fit together is critical in building commercially viable and reliable supply.”
The geography of demand is also changing. China remains central to global materials consumption, but its share of global metals consumption by revenue has declined from its 2020 peak, while India has become the second-largest regional market and continues to grow, shifting where the industry directs both capital and talent. Alongside the energy transition, digital infrastructure is creating new demand for selected materials, with data centres expected to account for approximately 4% of global copper demand by 2030.
At the same time, McKinsey identifies a US$450 –US$750 billion annual productivity opportunity that remains largely untapped. Productivity in metals and mining flatlined in 2025 after a brief post-pandemic rebound, despite rapid advances in technology. The industry’s autonomous haulage fleet has nearly tripled in the past two years, but the application of AI, automation, and advanced analytics has yet to translate into sustained industry-wide productivity improvements.
Karel Eloot, Senior Partner, McKinsey said: “The next productivity frontier in metals and mining is technology-enabled. At least $450 billion in annual opportunity exists across throughput, recovery, procurement and capital efficiency. In particular, AI, advanced analytics, automation and robotics are creating new ways to raise performance beyond what conventional improvement alone can deliver. Capturing this potential will require companies to move quickly from pilots to scaled, KPI-driven deployment throughout the value chain.”
Decarbonisation progress also remains constrained by cost and competitiveness pressures. Metals and mining emissions are projected to decline by just 8% by 2035, with much of this dependent on grid decarbonisation rather than changes to production assets.
Meeting future demand, including from infrastructure, energy, AI and defence, while sustaining existing supply will require significant investment. McKinsey estimates that approximately US$4.2 trillion in capital expenditure may be needed across mining and processing through 2035.
