Fresnillo
World's largest primary silver producer extracts 500 years of institutional memory from eight Mexican mines with 52% margins and precious metal specialization.
The world's largest primary silver producer operates like a specialized metabolic pathway optimized for precious metal extraction. Eight Mexican mines produced 24.9 million oz silver and 313,800 oz gold in H1 2025, generating $1.94 billion revenue—a 30% increase driven by precious metal price surges. At 52% EBITDA margins, Fresnillo demonstrates extraction efficiency in a narrow commodity niche.
The 500-year-old flagship Fresnillo mine exemplifies ultra-long asset lifecycles in mining ecology. While tech companies measure product life in years, this operation has extracted silver since 1554, surviving Spanish colonial rule, Mexican independence, revolution, nationalization threats, and commodity supercycles. Institutional memory here isn't measured in executive tenure but geological time—the mine plan extends generations into the future.
Juanicipio's 2024 commissioning created the world's "largest scale and lowest-cost primary silver mine globally," demonstrating competitive displacement through superior efficiency. The operation achieved $40 million cost savings through contractor rationalization and maintenance improvements, showing how established players optimize metabolic pathways when new capacity enters the ecosystem.
Portfolio concentration creates silver price exposure that diversified miners avoid. Fresnillo's 29% revenue increase to $3.5 billion in 2024 and profit jump to $743.9 million came entirely from precious metal price appreciation—the company has no base metal hedging. The January 2025 commissioning of San Carlos shaft at the Fresnillo mine and $530 million 2025 capex show continued investment in deepening existing reserves rather than geographic diversification. When your metabolic niche is silver, you dig deeper rather than wider.