Producer
Glencore (Zinc Division)
Swiss-UK commodity trading and mining company (LSE: GLEN, HQ Baar, Zug Switzerland; ~$250B revenue); world's largest zinc producer by combined mining and trading operations. Glencore's zinc mining assets include: Mount Isa (Queensland Australia — one of the world's largest underground zinc-lead-silver mines), Lady Loretta (Queensland), Antamina (Peru — joint venture), and multiple other mines. Glencore also markets zinc concentrate from third-party miners through its commodity trading arm. Glencore's business model — combining mine ownership with commodity trading intelligence — gives it unique market positioning: it both produces zinc and trades the global zinc supply, enabling it to influence prices and allocations in ways that pure miners or pure traders cannot. Glencore is also the world's largest coal exporter and a major cobalt producer (Katanga, DRC) — the same Swiss trading house that mines zinc for galvanizing irrigation pipes also mines the cobalt in EV batteries and the coal that generates electricity for steel mills that process galvanized steel.
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Inputs supplied
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Goods downstream
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Facilities
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Stories
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2 inputs Glencore (Zinc Division) supplies
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Zinc Mining & Trading
20%Coal (Largest Global Exporter)
30%Cobalt & Copper (DRC)
25%Commodity Trading (Baar Switzerland)
25%
Intelligence
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Origin2023
Glencore was founded in 1974 in Zug, Switzerland by Marc Rich -- one of the most controversial figures in commodity trading history. Rich built what was then called Marc Rich & Co. into the world's largest independent commodity trading firm, pioneering spot oil trading and creating the 'spot market' model that now dominates commodity trading. Rich was indicted by the US Department of Justice in 1983 for tax evasion and trading with Iran during the hostage crisis -- he became a fugitive, fled to Switzerland, and lived there until a pardon by President Clinton on his last day in office in 2001. In 1994, Rich's partners bought out his stake and renamed the company Glencore International. Glencore went public in 2011 in one of the largest IPOs in London Stock Exchange history, acquiring Xstrata (a major diversified miner) in 2013 for $46B. Today Glencore is the world's largest commodity trader and a top-5 global miner -- built on the trading model that Marc Rich invented while simultaneously a fugitive from US justice. The company that trades the cobalt in your EV battery and the zinc on your irrigation pipes was founded by a man who was pardoned by Bill Clinton at 12:01 AM on January 20, 2001.
Glencore plc ↗Did you know2023
Glencore plc (Baar, Zug, Switzerland) is simultaneously the world's largest zinc producer, the world's largest coal exporter, the world's largest cobalt producer (Katanga, DRC — over 20% of global cobalt), and a major copper, nickel, and ferroalloy producer and trader. The zinc that Glencore mines at Mount Isa (Queensland Australia) and markets globally goes into galvanizing the steel for center pivot irrigation structures — protecting the steel from rust in agricultural field conditions. The cobalt that Glencore mines at Katanga (DRC) goes into the cathodes of EV batteries and the rechargeable batteries in laptops and phones. The coal that Glencore exports (primarily from Australian mines it acquired from Rio Tinto in 2011) powers steel mills and electricity generation globally. One company in a Swiss tax canton manages the supply chains for: galvanized steel irrigation (zinc), electric vehicles (cobalt), power generation (coal), and electrical infrastructure (copper). The same 2018 Glencore cobalt price manipulation controversy that harmed battery makers also involved the same corporate entity supplying zinc to galvanizers for agricultural equipment — Glencore's commodity positions span unrelated supply chains through a single trading book.
Glencore plc ↗