Saudi Arabia’s 11.95 billion riyals ($3.2 billion) of funding for a joint venture that will invest in mining assets internationally is “going to be a moving target,” Mining Minister Bandar Alkhorayef said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

“We are establishing a governance between this JV with the ministry to make sure that this JV allows the country to get the right minerals needed for our industrial strategy and our needs in general,” he said

In 2022, Saudi Arabia saw as much as $32 billion of investments in the mineral sector, a 50% growth in revenues from 2021, the minister said in a separate interview

Saudi Arabia had previously estimated its mineral wealth at $1.3 trillion, but that’s now considered conservative because discoveries have been better than expected, he said

Eoin Treacy's view

Maaden is now one of the largest industrial metal miners in the world and is only beginning to invest beyond Saudi Arabia’s borders. That represents a significant source of new competition for world-class mining opportunities and suggests bidding wars will be more common.

Phosphate is more than half the business (54.5%), followed by significant Aluminium operations (36.9%) while gold production occupies about 8.6% of revenue.

That mix makes Rio Tinto or Mosaic the best comparison for commonality. Rio has a relatively similar, though less impressive uptrend while Mosaic is firming from the region of the most recent lows.