Vancouver-based Teck Resources sacrifices most profitable assets on altar of ESG
One of the biggest B.C. business news stories of 2024 was the announcement Teck Resources (TSX:TECK.B, NYSE:TEK), B.C.’s biggest miner and Canada’s only diversified mining major, will sell its most profitable assets – its B.C. coal mines – to an even bigger diversified mining major: Switzerland’s Glencore plc (LSE:GLEN).
For $9 billion, Glencore will acquire a 77 per cent interest in Teck’s four steelmaking coal mines in B.C., collectively called Elk Valley Resources (EVR), with Nippon Steel and South Korea’s POSCO owning the balance in a deal totalling $12 billion. EVR will also own 46 per cent of Neptune Terminals in North Vancouver.
Having already divested itself of oil, Teck’s climate penance will be nearly complete, once it has also divested itself of its coal mines. Teck’s sustainability strategy aims to reduce the company’s carbon intensity by 33 per cent by 2030, and divesting itself of carbon-heavy assets could move Teck closer to that goal much quicker.
Provided the Canadian government doesn’t block it – and there seems to be little reason to believe it will – it will leave Teck a smaller metals pureplay company. “This is an end of an era, but it’s the beginning of a new one as well for British Columbia and Canadian mining,” said Michael Goehring, CEO for the Mining Association of BC. “A well-capitalized Teck Resources has very strong critical mineral assets and they intend to grow and build on those assets.”
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