A Russian-British mining executive has launched an attempt to build an international copper-mining portfolio with the purchase of a Turkish mine and will soon set his sights on Canada.
Earlier this month, Artem Volynets, the chairman and CEO of ACG Metals Ltd., which is listed on the London Stock Exchange, announced an investment of US$290-million in the Gediktepe mine in western Turkey. In an interview with The Globe and Mail, he said the purchase marked the first step of his “company’s vision to roll up the copper sector through a series of acquisitions.”
He said he will initially concentrate on buying single, privately owned mines with the goal of producing 200,000 to 300,000 tonnes of copper a year within three years, about 1 per cent of global production.
The metal is considered critical for the battery and electric-vehicle revolution. A typical EV requires some 80 kilograms of copper, about four times more than a regular car. Copper is such a hot commodity that some of the world’s biggest mining companies have launched hostile bids for producers with heavy exposure to the metal.
BHP Group Ltd. BHPLF, the world’s biggest mining group, earlier this year came up short in its £39-billion bid to buy rival Anglo American. In 2023, Teck Resources Ltd. TECK-B-T, Canada’s biggest diversified miner, rebuffed a takeover attempt from Switzerland’s Glencore PLC GLNCY, the world’s biggest commodities trader, which later bought Teck’s metallurgical coal assets in British Columbia.
At the moment, the Gediktepe open-pit mine is a gold and silver producer. It will become largely a copper and zinc producer in 2026, after a US$145-million expansion is completed.
The Turkish purchase has been a long time coming. Mr. Volynets founded ACG in 2014 and raised about US$1-billion last year to buy two nickel and copper mines in Brazil as part of a deal backed by Glencore and automakers Volkswagen AG and Stellantis NV, the owner of the Citroën, Fiat and Jeep brands, which wanted to secure supplies of the metals for their electric cars. The deal fell apart when a supply glut from Indonesia’s vast nickel industry hit the market, pushing down prices and hurting valuations.
Mr. Volynets, 57, was born on the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia’s far east and is the son of a volcanologist. He emigrated to the United States in 1991 and rose to the top of the aluminum empire then controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. From 2010 to 2013, he was the CEO of En+ Group, now the world’s second-biggest aluminum maker.
In 2022, ACG, the London Stock Exchange’s only mining SPAC – special purpose acquisition company – joined the market through a US$122-million initial public offering. SPACs, also known as blank-cheque companies, are formed to merge with, or buy, private companies. These vehicles have been far more popular in the United States than in Europe.
The London market has only a few direct copper plays. The main one is Antofagasta, which operates four copper mines in Chile. It has a market value of £17.4-billion, up 20 per cent in the past year. Mining companies with strong exposure to copper have generally traded up in recent months, partly on the prospect of interest rate cuts. Teck shares have climbed almost 8 per cent in the past year.
ACG has a Canadian connection. Among Mr. Volynets’s advisers is Robert Friedland, the American-Canadian executive co-chairman of Vancouver’s Ivanhoe Mines, one of the world’s biggest producers of copper, nickel and zinc. Another Canadian adviser is Warren Gilman, the CEO of Queen’s Road Capital of Hong Kong, a financier to the global resources industry.
A small ACG investor is Michael Tory, a Canadian investment banker who works from London and is a friend of Mr. Volynets. “Artem combines strategic and analytical strengths with the ability to make sound decisions with imperfect information,” Mr. Tory said. “This will help ACG build a material copper industry player.”
Mr. Volynets said that at some point he will turn his focus to Canada, whose mining industry he considers important to the global supply of critical metals, but he has no immediate target. “There are a number of interesting copper assets in Canada and elsewhere in North and South America,” he said. “We would like to buy a Canadian-listed mining company and become a presence on the Toronto exchange.”