Water stewardship

Water is a vital shared resource, essential to both our mining processes and any communities that may live where we operate.

As the global population grows, the demand for good quality water required to meet the needs of society, agriculture and industry, continues to escalate. This often occurs in the face of mounting water supply pressure caused by more frequent droughts.

Managing water responsibly and ensuring that adverse impacts on local and regional water resources are avoided, is a major consideration for all of our operations.

To ensure long-term resilience against variable rainfall patterns and fluctuating regional availability, we employ a systematic, adaptive approach to water stewardship. We view effective water management not only as an environmental necessity but as a critical component of operational stability.

Where feasible, we implement closed-loop systems that recycle process water, eliminating the need for environmental discharge and in regions with high rainfall where discharge is required to manage excess runoff, we apply treatment processes to ensure all water leaving our sites maintains appropriate water quality standards and aligns with regional catchment priorities.

Water balance model

Policies and standards

For further information, refer to the 2025 Sustainability Report: Water stewardship

Performance in 2025

Water withdrawal (ML)

Water sources by climatic type (%)