MineSpans
Metals & Mining market intelligence solution, combining global expertise with proprietary data
MineSpans market intelligence services offer a comprehensive outlook of the metals and mining industries. Built by McKinsey’s commodities experts, and covering 14,000+ global assets across 15+ commodity value chains, our detailed bottom-up supply and demand forecasts, granular cost models, and ESG data empower decision makers.
Data & Insights
Supply and Demand Outlooks
- Granular supply forecasts based on asset production data at the global, regional, and/or asset level
- Available and forecasted supply by project status, ownership, and material grades or products
- Demand outlooks by region, industry, sector, segment, and application based on material end use, intensity, and global economic and climate scenarios
Market balance by product
- Market balances under multiple supply and demand scenarios, taking into account secondary supply and related drivers
- Market balance by finished material or material chemistry
- Market balance by project category and potential
Our experts
- In-depth technical and market expertise across commodity markets
- Bespoke research and analysis leveraging MineSpans' database
- Workshops on macro-level insights, highlighting recent changes and key topics
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) analysis
- Asset-level bottom-up environmental footprint assessment with CO2 emission curves detailing Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 CO2 emissions, including carbon price scenario impacts on costs
- Value-chain water intensity curves, including direct and indirect water intensity
- Asset-level land and water exposure and vulnerability, taking into account asset locations and specificities
Commodity market outlooks
- Beyond the data: numbers summarized into insights by McKinsey’s global team of commodity experts and analysts
- Regional and sector deep dives across the material value chains that explore the implications of major events and announcements
- Summaries of supply and demand by commodity, price scenarios, impact of ESG, regulations, the latest market trends, and more
Cost and profitability analysis
- Granular historical and forecasted cash costs broken down by activity, including mining, processing, overhead, freight, treatment charges, refining charges, value-in-use (VIU) correction, by-product credits, royalties, capital expenditure, and SG&A costs
- Dynamic asset models detailing cost calculations and flexibility for key macro and asset-level parameters (e.g., exchange rates, energy costs, commodity prices, production, labor, and more)
- Dynamic sensitivity analysis, estimating asset profitability through cash flows and net asset value (NAV)
Our Commodities
Our Methodology
Data
Our teams gather and extract macro, commodity-specific, and asset-level data from approved, publicly available sources. All relevant data points are then thoroughly validated by our team of commodity experts, ensuring quality and consistency.
Modeling
MineSpans’ proprietary modeling combines sourced data with our vast experience across the materials processing industry to create supply and demand outlooks and asset- and value-chain-level cost, CO2, and water curves.
Analysis and Insights
Our interactive portal ensures users can quickly find the content they require—including market balances, market perspectives, asset-specific NAV models, and comprehensive data sets—to provide the intelligence their business needs.
Benefits
Rigorous and detailed analysis
Rather than settling for top-down estimates, our cost curves are built bottom-up, based on a robust and detailed analysis. All our models use the same framework, enabling clients to estimate supply, demand, cost, and ESG metrics globally by commodity, country, region, asset, and operator.
Data quality and transparency
MineSpans employs a global network of analysts with extensive expertise who distill available public information to construct a consistent, structured model for each metal and mining operation. Every sourced MineSpans data point is annotated with the original source so that clients have full transparency on references.
Expertise across the global value chain
MineSpans leverages McKinsey’s 85 years of industry expertise and our commodities professionals’ extensive experience across the metals and mining value chain, providing your organization with a truly comprehensive and accurate perspective of the industry.
Video
MineSpans overview
Chris Mulligan, Solution Partner, shares how MineSpans cost, CO2, and water curves and supply and demand models are utilized by operators, owners, and investors.
Client Impact Stories
Case Study
How Apple is helping unearth a path toward increasing the global use of circular materials
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As the need for recycled materials continues to grow, Apple worked with McKinsey to understand how expanding circular value chains could help meet the demand.
Case Study
From instinct to real-time insight: Transforming steel sales with AI
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ArcelorMittal Brazil partnered with McKinsey to redesign its sales journey. A gen AI–powered tool removed the friction of everyday selling, freeing salespeople to focus on what mattered most: creating value for customers.
Case Study
Emirates Global Aluminium: Leading the industry with AI-driven transformation
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How a top aluminium producer tapped the power of AI to transform the organization and scale impact across operations
Case Study
Freeport-McMoRan: Unlocking new mining production through AI transformation
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Freeport-McMoRan, one of the world’s leading mining companies, faced a dilemma. To maintain growth in its Americas copper operations it needed to increase production. Freeport believed the answer lay in improving operations with advanced analytics.
M&A Assessment
The approach provided by MineSpans serves as an excellent tool for due diligence purposes as well as for potential M&A target identification. MineSpans insights are based on 85 years of McKinsey expertise, and the functional utility of data collected on a granular level are unmatched in terms of supporting strategic M&A.
“Very good insights, much needed replacement product. Very happy with granular approach, ‘best I've seen.’ Copper knowledge is excellent. Just another brilliant capacity of McKinsey.”
—Analyst, large full-service investment bank
Long-Term Operational Strategy
MineSpans demand, supply, and cost insights are a great tool used by mine managers around the world for daily operational management purposes. MineSpans also serves as an unrivalled tool for the long-term scenario modeling required for strategic decision making and operations management.
“Very good system, very user friendly, and this could help us further improve our operations. Excellent online scenario-modeling feature, will find a lot of utility.”
—Senior manager, global mining company
Capital and Financial Planning
Dynamic cost curves and mine models supported by modeling capability allow MineSpans users to make the right financial decisions with certainty. They are supported with transparent data contained within a document library and access to all sources by mine, company, and location. The robust data-quality-assurance processes ensure the highest level of confidence.
“The resources for data collection ensure better coverage. We understand why our mining CEO was impressed and wanted us to talk to you. This is exactly the kind of tool we need.”
—Analyst, global metal manufacturer