Minas-Rio and Barro Alto mines achieve IRMA 75

Anglo American PLC

07 February 2024

 

7 February 2024

Minas-Rio and Barro Alto mines achieve IRMA 75 on responsible mining standard

Anglo American announces that its Minas-Rio iron ore and Barro Alto nickel mines in Brazil have been assessed against the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance's (IRMA) comprehensive mining standard, achieving the IRMA 75 level of performance, reflecting Anglo American's integrated approach to sustainability and its commitment to transparency in striving for the highest levels of responsible metals production.

Minas-Rio and Barro Alto are the first iron ore and nickel-producing mines in the world to complete an IRMA audit. This follows the achievement of our Unki platinum mine in Zimbabwe, the first in the world to publicly commit to be independently audited against the IRMA Standard for Responsible Mining and which also achieved IRMA 75 in 2021.

Ruben Fernandes, Anglo American's Regional Director - Americas, said: "We believe our participation in IRMA helps promote transparency and best practice in sustainability, while adding value to our customers by helping them to meet increasing expectations for responsibly sourced mined materials in an efficient and credible way. Through our digital traceability platform Valutrax™, which launched last year, we are also making it easier for customers to have visibility over products with third-party assurance such as IRMA, empowering the transparency and provenance of their purchasing decisions. We are continuing to make great progress towards assuring all our operations against a recognised responsible mining standard by 2025, as we committed to in our Sustainable Mining Plan."

Aimee Boulanger, Executive Director of IRMA, said: "We applaud Anglo American for volunteering the first iron ore and nickel mines for an audit against the IRMA Standard for Responsible Mining, and for its larger commitment to put all their metal mining operations to IRMA audit. That commitment, along with their IRMA Board membership, exemplifies Anglo American's ongoing leadership in the practical application of responsible mining principles."

Ana Sanches, CEO of Anglo American in Brazil, commented: "The IRMA assurance process has provided us with a valuable opportunity to measure our performance at Minas-Rio and Barro Alto against international best sustainability practices and identify next steps for improvement. The result is informed by evidence from a diverse range of stakeholders including employees, governments, NGOs, customers and communities alike. We are immensely proud of the work the teams have been doing at Minas-Rio and Barro Alto on responsible mining, and we look forward to continue leading the way for our other mining operations across Anglo American."

The IRMA scoring system recognises four levels of performance: IRMA Transparency, in which a mine is third-party-assessed and publicly shares its scores; IRMA 50 or 75, signifying that a mine meets a core set of critical requirements together with at least 50% or 75% of the requirements in each of the four sections of the Standard for Responsible Mining and IRMA 100, which signifies the mine meets all of the Standard's requirements.

Other Anglo American operations that have been independently audited include the Mototolo, Amandelbult and Mogalakwena PGMs operations in South Africa; and the Kolomela and Sishen iron ore operations, also in South Africa. The outcomes of those audit reports are pending.

IRMA's Standard for Responsible Mining has been developed over a decade through a public consultation process with more than 100 different individuals and organisations, including mining companies, customers and the ultimate downstream users of mined products, NGOs, labour unions, and communities, and is considered to be one of the most rigorous certification processes.  The link to the Minas-Rio and Barro Alto reports can be found on IRMA's website at: https://responsiblemining.net/.

For further information, please contact:

Media		Investors
UK James Wyatt-Tilby [e-mail] Tel: [phone] Marcelo Esquivel [e-mail] Tel: [phone] Rebecca Meeson-Frizelle [e-mail] Tel: + 44 (0)20 7968 1374 South Africa Nevashnee Naicker [e-mail] Tel: [phone] Sibusiso Tshabalala [e-mail] Tel: [phone]		UK Paul Galloway [e-mail] Tel: [phone] Emma Waterworth [e-mail] Tel: [phone] Juliet Newth [e-mail] Tel: [phone] Michelle Jarman [e-mail]  Tel: [phone]

Notes to editors:

Anglo American is a leading global mining company and our products are the essential ingredients in almost every aspect of modern life. Our portfolio of world-class competitive operations, with a broad range of future development options, provides many of the future-enabling metals and minerals for a cleaner, greener, more sustainable world and that meet the fast growing every day demands of billions of consumers. With our people at the heart of our business, we use innovative practices and the latest technologies to discover new resources and to mine, process, move and market our products to our customers - safely and sustainably.

As a responsible producer of copper, nickel, platinum group metals, diamonds (through De Beers), and premium quality iron ore and steelmaking coal - with crop nutrients in development - we are committed to being carbon neutral across our operations by 2040. More broadly, our Sustainable Mining Plan commits us to a series of stretching goals to ensure we work towards a healthy environment, creating thriving communities and building trust as a corporate leader. We work together with our business partners and diverse stakeholders to unlock enduring value from precious natural resources for the benefit of the communities and countries in which we operate, for society as a whole, and for our shareholders. Anglo American is re-imagining mining to improve people's lives.

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