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Events/Merger · 2013

Glencore completes merger with Xstrata

Merger, 2013-05-02, Switzerland.

What happened

Glencore completed its merger with Xstrata on 2 May 2013.1,2

Why it matters

The merger joined a large trading house with a large mining group.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Panguna mine halted

    The closure became tied to the Bougainville conflict.3,4

  2. Privatisation of ZCCM weakens TAZARA's copper traffic

    More copper then went by road along southern routes and the Tanzam highway.5,6

  3. Northparkes block cave air blast

    Northparkes was the first block caving mine in Australia, and the Coroner's findings shaped how block caving is regulated there.7,8

  4. Falun Great Copper Mountain inscribed

    UNESCO World Heritage listing event.9

  5. Berkeley Pit cleanup settlement

    The EPA called it the nation's largest body of contaminated water.10,11

  6. Copiapo mining accident (33 miners trapped)

    Copiapo mining accident (33 miners trapped). Wikidata records 0 deaths.12

  7. Manefay landslides at Bingham Canyon

    UGS says Kennecott had a sophisticated network of geotechnical monitors in place.13,14

  8. Angola awards a 30-year Benguela Railway concession

    The Lobito Atlantic Railway consortium took over the Angolan line (some sources date the award to 2023).15,16

Open the full timeline

Where next

Mines

OwnedKamoto Copper Company (KCC) / Katanga Mining ComplexGlencore holds 75 per cent of Katanga Mining. Gecamines holds the other 25 per cent.17OwnedMount Isa MinesGlencore said in May 2025 that no decision had been made on the Mount Isa smelter.18

Events

Came out ofGlencore lists in LondonGlencore completed its merger with Xstrata on 2 May 2013.1Came out ofMarc Rich + Co AG establishedA ferro-alloys trader of 1974 grew into a producer and trader of over 90 commodities.1

Sources

  1. Glencore timeline
  2. Baar (item Q64087), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. History: Panguna Mine Bougainville Copper Limited
  4. Panguna mine (item Q17060798), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  5. 'Win-win' contested: negotiating the privatisation of Africa's Freedom Railway with the 'Chinese of today' Journal of Modern African Studies 59(1) (Cambridge University Press)
  6. Wikidata item Q239580 (Kitwe)
  7. 1999 Northparkes Air Blast case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  8. Parkes (item Q605513), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  9. Mining Area of the Great Copper Mountain in Falun UNESCO World Heritage Centre
  10. US and Montana reach agreement with mining companies to clean up Berkeley Pit (25 Mar 2002) US Environmental Protection Agency
  11. Berkeley Pit (item Q820869), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  12. Wikidata item Q214790 (Copiapo mining accident (33 miners trapped))
  13. Bingham Canyon's Manefay Landslides and the Future of the Mine Utah Geological Survey
  14. Bingham Canyon Mine (item Q2450901), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  15. From Transit to Transformation: Leveraging the Lobito Corridor (Angola Economic Update) World Bank
  16. Wikidata item Q223914 (Lobito)
  17. data/minerals/operations.csv Prospector Trails (internal)
  18. Mount Isa update, 8 May 2025 Glencore

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0.