Top 50 Most Valuable Mines

Although gold was the most valuable mined metal globally in 2016, the individual mines are relatively small compared with those extracting iron ore and copper. Indeed, there is a total of only 10 primary gold, zinc and nickel operations in the top 50 list, with aggregate production values of US$9.7 billion, US$4.1 billion and US$3.9 billion, respectively. Despite the apparent low mine ranking for gold, a handful of copper operations, such as Freeport-McMoRan Inc.'s Grasberg, PT Amman Mineral Internasional's Batu Hijau and Vale SA's Salobo, benefit from the high byproduct value of their gold production.

The ranking is led by Rio Tinto's Hamersley operation, but although the U.K.-based company's operation takes top spot, Vale has the most operations on the list, with nine operations producing a total value of US$21.4 billion. Seven of these operations are primary iron ore mines, which produced a total value of US$18.5 billion. Serra Norte, the second-highest valued operation on the list, produced US$7.9 billion of iron ore. Vale also owns copper and nickel mines in the top 50, Salobo and Ontario Division, which produced a combined value of almost US$2.9 billion in 2016.

Notable changes in last year's ranking, compared with 2015, include the fall of Escondida from third place in 2015 to fifth last year — note that the value ascribed to Escondida's mined copper includes contained metal that was not payable, so the tabulated figure will be significantly higher than the reported revenue. The biggest riser was MMG Ltd.'s Las Bambas mine in Peru, which ranked only 824 in 2015 but had risen to the 31st place in 2016. The leap was due to the start of production late in 2015 and the beginning of commercial production at the start of the third quarter of 2016. Cerro Verde also saw a notable reranking, rising from 44th to 15th.

Anglo American Plc's Los Bronces and Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd.'s Oyu Tolgoi experienced the largest year on year declines. Both operations saw significant falls in ore grades. The former slumped in copper production following a fall in copper grade to 0.67% from 0.92% in 2015. The grade is expected to drop even further to 0.55% copper this year. Oyu Tolgoi's gold production fell 54% year on year after a fall in grade to 0.36 g/t from 0.78 g/t in 2015 and is expected to decline to only 0.16 g/t this year. Elsewhere, Vale's Mariana mine saw a 7.7 Mt fall in iron ore production compared with its production in 2015.