Sustainability

Every mine is a guest in a community. It depends on the people who live beside it, on the land and water around it, and on a deposit that will never form again. Sustainability is how a guest becomes a partner. It is not a departmental programme; it is built into who we are, driven by the three values the company was founded on: protecting and improving human rights, creating fair value and transparent supply chains, and working towards zero waste.

Community

Our neighbours should be better off because we are there.

• We hire from the communities around our operations wherever we can, and offer work that is formal, safe and fairly paid.
• We invest in what our host communities tell us they need: education, infrastructure and support for local entrepreneurs.
• We back local sport, because a team, a coach and a pitch keep people playing, learning and connected to the place they call home.
• We plan for closure from the start, so that the skills and businesses a mine creates outlast it, and the land stays useful long after the ore is gone.
• Anyone affected by our operations can raise a concern through our grievance mechanism, and every concern receives an answer.

Environment

Our by-products should become raw materials for the industries our host countries are building.

• We design our mining and refining so that what one process leaves behind becomes the feedstock of another.
• We work with local industry to put our by-products to productive use, wherever the chemistry and the law allow.
• We recycle the water we use, and manage storm-water run-off to protect the rivers and fields downstream.
• Rehabilitation is built into how we mine, and closure is funded in advance, so that restoring the land never becomes a burden for the communities around it.

Resource stewardship

Every tonne we mine should give up everything it holds.

• We work every deposit as a national resource entrusted to us, not as something we own.
• We recover the minerals that travel with tantalum, such as tin, tungsten, niobium and lithium, even in small quantities.
• We see old tailings as a resource to work again, not a liability to bury.
• We push recovery as far as we can, because every percentage point gained is ore that never has to be dug from somewhere else.