The mining industry stands at a pivotal moment. Global expectations for responsible production are rising alongside demand for more critical metals and minerals. Producers are increasingly interested in achieving high operating standards.
At the same time, the standards landscape has grown to become too complex, with a multitude of options. Some producers struggle to choose from the field of available standards, many of which contain overlapping criteria. Others take on a heavy compliance burden of participating in multiple standards.
As the Copper Mark has grown to apply our standards and assurance framework at more than 100 sites around the world, the need for consolidation has become obvious. Through our regular benchmarking exercises against our peers we couldn’t help but see growing duplication and redundancies. We suspected this was becoming a barrier to responsible production.
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We reached out to hear what stakeholders had to say. After listening to companies, the Community Schemes Ombud Service, shareholders, governments and others it was clear something needed to be done. Consolidating the four standards has been a complex and transformative process.
It required not just technical alignment, but the creation of a new system — one that incorporates the best of what came before while also addressing gaps, redundancies and the evolving expectations of society. Importantly, it needs to effectively drive performance improvements on the ground by pairing credible criteria with robust assurance. A feature of the CMSI process is the role of diverse stakeholders’ input, aligned with the Iseal Code of Good Practice — a globally recognised framework, defining practices for effective and credible sustainability systems.
The expectation is that those impacted by mining — communities, workers, civil society and others — are given opportunity to meaningfully participate in the development and implementation of the standards. This is not without its challenges. CMSI partners have had to weigh their obligations and ambitions while incorporating feedback from stakeholders across the globe.
Progress has demanded commitment and good faith from all involved, even in the face of competing priorities and public scrutiny. With three industry associations at the table, criticism about a power imbalance is not unfounded. But there have been substantive efforts to have outside voices feed into the consolidation process and a commitment from industry to step back and relinquish control to an independent, diverse governing body that will ultimately finalise, implement and manage the standard over time.
The CMSI’s second public consultation concluded in late 2025, with more than 100 stakeholders and rights-holders from around the globe submitting 3,000 comments. We will publish a detailed third-party consultation report outlining key themes and insights from the feedback received and the verbatim submissions (with consent). Over the coming months the CMSI partners will consider all contributions as we advance the consolidated mining standard and its related assurance process and claims policy towards finalisation.
Revised drafts will be shared with the CMSI’s stakeholder and industry advisory groups and the evolved independent board of directors, which will have sole authority for approval of the final standard. While the CMSI’s conclusion may be on the horizon, a transformation is just beginning for the Copper Mark, the organisation I have led for six years. We will take ownership of the consolidated mining standard, alongside our suite of other standards and tools supporting responsible production across mineral and metals value chains.
The Copper Mark will be adopting a new mandate and name and the evolved board of directors, which will lead our organisation to a new phase of growth. The road ahead is sure to have twists, turns and steep climbs. But through it all I am confident our work will bring a great opportunity to make meaningful progress towards a world where mineral and metal products are made responsibly as the foundation of a sustainable future.
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