Numerous industries worldwide depend on the supply of mineral commodities from mining operations. The dependency of various high-tech-industries on
. Consequently, the mining sector is pivotal to the world’s economy. The revenue of the top 40 global mining companies, which represent a vast majority of the whole industry amounted to a record 925 billion U.S. dollars in 2021, and dropped down to an estimated 863 billion U.S. dollars in 2025. The
What are the leading mineral commodities and where are they produced?
In terms of volume, the
most exploited mineral commodities worldwide are iron ore, coal, potash, and copper. China, Indonesia, and India are the largest coal producing countries. China is also the third largest producer of iron ore. Indeed,
China has become the leading mining country for many commodities, especially for the highly demanded rare earths, of which China accounted for nearly 69.7 percent of the global production in 2024. Additionally, China was the
world’s leading gold mining country, with Russia in second place. The South American countries Chile and Peru, on the other hand, accounted for the first and third largest copper production worldwide at that time.
The world's major mining companies
The
mining industry’s leading companies based on market capitalization as of March 2025 were BHP from Australia and Rio Tinto from the United Kingdom. BHP had a market capitalization of nearly 122 billion U.S. dollars at that time.
Glencore was the leading mining company worldwide based on revenue in 2024, having amounted to almost 230 billion U.S. dollars that year, although a large share of Glencore’s revenue comes from commodity trading. In 2025, three of the world's 10
leading mining companies based on revenue were based in the UK, while another three were based in China.
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liability for the information given being complete or correct.
Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date
data than referenced in the text.
