Impact of Covid-19 on the Mining Sector and Raw Materials Security in Selected European Countries

Abstract

Events that change the global economy rapidly, without warning, in principle strongly affect mining, which is one of the pillars of global development. After the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mining pillar seems to be relatively stable. In this study, thanks to the meeting of an international team, it was possible to collect and compare a set of data on the impact on mining. In contrast to the general assessments of the stability of the mining sector, the authors decided to assess the impact of Covid-19 at individual stages of the mining project life cycle. In this way, it was possible to identify the most impacted fragments of the mining pillar. It was assessed that the highest influence of Covid-19 is observed in projects implementing feasibility studies and in projects for the development of new mines. The same is true of extracting residual resources in mines prior to the closure decision. The medium impact was confirmed at the exploration and discovery stage. The authors conclude that the impact on the current mining production is smaller and the effects in this case are short term, which is mainly due to a continued strong demand for minerals in China, which has balanced the weaker demand in other parts of the world. On the other hand, stopping the exploration and development of new mines will have a long-term impact, including an increased possibility of disruption of the future security of supplies of raw materials.

Estimating US Earnings Loss Associated with COVID-19 Based on Human Capital Calculation

“…Uncertainty of the disease tends to increase during the winter months. On the other hand, interruptions to the functioning of the global supply chains have disrupted the access to raw materials [ 37 ]. Moreover, the increased health hazard has limited communication, trade and access to all kinds of goods and services along with market volatility and economic uncertainty.…”

Building a strategy for the mining and metallurgy companies during the Covid-19 pandemic

“…This type of problem for the mining and metallurgical companies has changed the current strategy. The situation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has led to the reduced demand and sales of many products, leading to the reduced economic activity and a slowdown, including the mining and nonrenewable natural resources sector [5]. Reduced demand for some products leads to oversupply, so that the price of metals has fallen, which has increased the world stocks, while gold prices are rising [6].…”

Save the giants: demand beyond production capacity of tantalum raw materials

“…However, the COVID-19 pandemic that temporarily closed mines, factories, and borders (Guan et al 2020 ) and disturbed the African mineral supply chain (Akcil et al 2020 ) has created a chaotic situation in the global mining industries such as losing billions of US dollars (Azevedo et al 2020 ). According to Andrzej Gała´ (Gałas et al 2021 ), the import–export of materials used for mining operations was interrupted, and the persisting of COVID-19 threatens to cause permanent disruption of the raw materials supply chain. It is critical to highlight that it could further complicate the puzzle for high tech-giant to satisfy consumers due to a shortage of tantalum-capacitor chips and alloys linked to the shortage of tantalum ore production.…”