BHP Group
World's largest miner at $146B market cap coordinates extraction across continents with portfolio bet-hedging and copper-focused metabolic shifts.
At 42,000 employees and $146 billion market cap, BHP operates like a superorganism coordinating resource extraction across continents. The company's Western Australia Iron Ore (WAIO) unit demonstrates keystone species dynamics: as the world's lowest-cost major iron ore producer, it anchors the entire Australian mining ecosystem while generating 27.9 billion of BHP's $55.6 billion revenue in 2024.
BHP's portfolio diversification mirrors bet-hedging in variable environments. Iron ore, copper, coal, and nickel cycle at different frequencies—when Chinese steel demand collapses, electric vehicle copper demand may surge. Record 263 Mt iron ore production in 2025 offset the December 2024 suspension of WA Nickel operations, showing resource reallocation from declining to thriving niches.
The company's 2024 Josemaria-Filo del Sol acquisition with Lundin Mining exemplifies coalition formation for accessing scarce resources. BHP invested $2.1 billion for 50% of one of the largest copper discoveries in 30 years, recognizing that copper scarcity in the energy transition creates selection pressure favoring those who control deposits. The Escondida mine in Chile delivered 18% unit cost reduction through metabolic efficiency—extracting more copper per ton of rock processed.
BHP's December 2025 sale of its WA power network stake to BlackRock for $2 billion demonstrates autophagy: divesting non-core infrastructure to fund copper expansion. Like organisms breaking down cellular components to survive starvation, BHP sheds transmission assets to concentrate resources on the commodity experiencing structural demand growth.