South32 poaches Anglo American’s Matthew Daley with copper expansion planned

The miner has pulled the trigger on its long-awaited leadership shake-up as it forges ahead with one eye on copper’s riches.

Outgoing CEO Graham Kerr has led South32 since 2015. Picture: Christian Gilles/NewsWire

South32 boss Graham Kerr says there is more work to be done, and potentially another copper or zinc mine to buy, before he hands over the reins to his newly anointed successor Matthew Daley.

Perth-headquartered South32 has poached Anglo American executive Mr Daley to take over from Mr Kerr in the biggest leadership shake up at the diversified miner since it was spun out of BHP a decade ago.

However, Adelaide-raised Mr Daley is not scheduled to join South32 until February, and will come onboard in an understudy role until Mr Kerr, who is 54, steps aside later in 2026.

Mr Kerr, who was on his way to Barcelona for a Bank of America conference on Monday, said Mr Daley had the “talent and energy” to take South32 into its second decade. But there were some unfinished tasks to set him and the company up for success.

“We’d love to own another operating asset in zinc or copper, and we’d love to have another couple of development options near term in zinc and copper,” Mr Kerr said.

“We have a lot of medium, long-term ones, but we’d like to have more options in the portfolio.”

Incoming South32 CEO Matthew Daley.

South 32 is pushing ahead with the Hermosa high-grade copper, manganese plus zinc-lead-silver mine in Arizona, and with a copper project in northwest Alaska.

BHP, Rio Tinto and other big, diversified miners have shown an appetite to grow in copper, complicating South32’s hunt for an operating mine or near-term project.

Mr Kerr said South32 wasn’t looking to compete with the likes of BHP and Rio.

“A large, or huge miner like a Rio or BHP need something like an Escondida to really move the share price. For a company the size of South32 what we’d love to find is another Cannington,” referring to the company’s zinc, silver and lead mine in Queensland, he said.

“I think we’re sort of hunting perhaps in different zones, and I think that gives us a few more opportunities as well.”

Mr Kerr said although South32 remained interested in buying out its minority partner Anglo and taking full ownership of the GEMCO manganese operations in Queensland, it was not pursuing a deal on those operations that were badly damaged by Cyclone Megan in 2024.

South32 and Anglo also share assets in South Africa and operate in similar geographies, which counted in Mr Daley’s favour.

Mr Daley’s base salary will be $2m but he can earn up to $4.68m a year including superannuation and short-term incentives plus an additional $4m in long-term incentives.

He will move from London, where he is Anglo’s technical and operations director and a member of the executive leadership team, to Perth. A leadership change had long been expected by the market after the recruitment process appeared to stall in 2024.

Prior to Anglo, he was the executive general manager of Glencore’s Canadian copper division.

The leadership change comes with BHP expected to step up the process of finding a replacement for chief executive Mike Henry now that Ross McEwan has replaced Ken MacKenzie as chairman.

Mr Kerr begins his long-dated farewell after refocusing South32 on so-called future facing metals in recent years and reshaping the portfolio with the sales of its South African Energy Coal business and Illawarra Metallurgical Coal.

South32 chair Karen Wood said Mr Kerr had made an outstanding contribution since coming over from BHP in the demerger and in the subsequent transformation of the portfolio.

“Graham will continue to lead the company through the transition period which will give Matthew the opportunity to get to know our people, our stakeholders and our many operations around the world before taking the helm,” she said.

“Matthew is a highly accomplished executive with extensive operational and leadership experience, including in copper and in the Americas, and the board is confident he is the right successor for Graham.”

Mr Daley acknowledged that South32’s portfolio has evolved substantially in recent years and was well positioned for potential growth. He said the company had a strong balance sheet, an attractive commodity mix, and a pipeline of growth options in highly prospective regions.

South32 pulled the trigger on developing the Taylor zinc-lead-silver deposit within the wider Hermosa project at a cost of $US2.16bn in last year, and was put on an approvals fast-track by the former government.

Taylor is scheduled to begin production in the second half of 2026-27.

Meanwhile, the Ambler copper project in northwest Alaska suffered a setback when state authorities blocked the building of a key ­access road on environmental grounds.

Mr Kerr said on Monday that tariffs imposed by US president Donald Trump after his return to the White House had not impacted South32’s three aluminium smelters, or the Worsley alumina operations in Western Australia.

South32 operates aluminium smelters in South Africa, Mozambique and Brazil with about 15 per cent of its production sold into the US in the six months to December 31.

Originally published as South32 poaches Anglo American’s Matthew Daley with copper expansion planned