✦ Lumwana & the Copper PivotNarrow moat

In 2025 Barrick Gold became Barrick Mining, and the Lumwana Super Pit is the reason. The roughly $2 billion expansion in Zambia lifts plant throughput from about 27 million tonnes a year to 52 million, roughly doubling copper output from about 120,000 tonnes to 240,000 tonnes annually over a mine life beyond thirty years¹. Construction has been advancing on time and on budget, with first copper from the mill expansion expected by the end of the first quarter of 2028².

Copper is a defensible strategic answer to gold's core problem. Gold's demand is sentiment — fear, central banks, jewellery — while copper's is physical and, thanks to electrification and data centres, structurally growing. Adding a thirty-year copper mine changes what kind of company Barrick is across a cycle, and it does so through an asset already owned and permitted rather than one acquired at a premium.

The honest deduction is that this diversifies the commodity without changing the business model: copper is also a price taken from a global market, and Zambia is not a jurisdiction anyone confuses with Nevada — power supply, tax stability and the kwacha all sit outside management's control. Watch first copper against the Q1 2028 date, the capital number against that $2 billion, and Lumwana's C1 cash cost once it ramps. A second-quartile copper mine at that scale is worth having; a high-cost one in Zambia is a hostage to the copper price.