The world's lead-zinc mineral resources: Scarcity, data, issues and opportunities

Global Projection of Lead-Zinc Supply from Known Resources

“…It is important to emphasize that these URR estimates are believed to still underestimate future resources, as additional deposits may be found, existing deposits may be expanded with additional exploration and evaluation (e.g., Antamina, amongst many others; see Mudd et al [8]), and there are many known deposits where resources data remains unavailable [8]. Whilst our modelling assumes that all known resources will be mined at some point in future, in practice, this may not occur, for example, socio-political or economic constraints prevent mining.…”

“…Some have argued that declines in economic resources of metals are likely to be addressed by new deposits [5][6][7], and changes in technology that make existing uneconomic deposits viable [5] (e.g., development of new process technology for the McArthur River deposit, Australia [8]), or that make mining wastes of new process technology for the McArthur River deposit, Australia [8]), or that make mining wastes salvageable [5,[9][10][11][12][13][14]. A number have also pointed to the theoretical recyclability [5,10,15,16] and high quality of in-use materials [5,17,18].…”

“…Although the USGS resources number is stated as identified, little information is publicly available to substantiate this figure. A detailed review of known deposits by Mudd et al has identified resources of at least 226 Mt Pb [8].…”

“…In the case of the URR for lead and zinc, recently published research from Mudd et al [8] provides improved estimates for lead and zinc resources. As shown in Figure 2, the bulk of growth for lead and zinc since 2000 has come from Chinese production; however, in 2015, the figures for Chinese production of lead and zinc are sharply lower.…”

“…The ability to disaggregate the data, breaking projections into specific country contributions, facilitates a more nuanced discussion on how production might be affected by different factors. Historic production of (a) lead and (b) zinc from Mudd et al [8] updated with data from the British Geological Survey [26].…”