25 Jul Member Profile: Ma’aden

Ma’aden is a GMG Collaborator Member. We spoke to David Scott Taylor, Director, Innovation & Digitalization at Ma’aden, about the company and our shared values.

Could you tell us about Ma’aden?

Ma’aden, the Saudi Arabian Mining Company, is a multi-commodity mining company that is building added value minerals-based industries for gold, aluminum, phosphate, copper and other mineral resources. It is one of the fastest growing mining companies in the world and the largest multi-commodity mining and metals company in the Middle East.

Ma’aden’s vision is to become a sustainable mining champion with a global presence, supported by a strong performance culture and a robust governance structure. The strategy for achieving this vision is focused on maximizing the value of its assets and strengthening foundations for growth by:

• Furthering the growth of Saudi Arabia’s mining sector in its role as the national champion
• Developing partnerships to grow international operations
• Continuously pursuing sustainability and building best-in-class capability

This strategy aligns with a renewed focus on mining in Saudi Arabia under the Saudi Vision 2030, which is a national effort to diversify the Saudi economy and transform the Kingdom into a leading industrial powerhouse.

One of Ma’aden’s core values is “Teamwork – Communication and collaboration with each other and across the company and with partners to achieve success.” Why is this a core value for you?

The Ma’aden leadership recognize that our large diversified company must leverage synergies of common opportunities and solutions across the whole business to achieve more value. It is a recognition that the whole business is greater than its parts. To achieve these synergies, we must employ communication for transparency, with the intention of collaboration, to be truly effective.

 It is also about engagement – when our stakeholders have awareness of the entire Ma’aden company ecosystem, they know how they contribute and where those synergies exist. This also creates opportunities for a more engaged workforce, efficiencies across the business, eliminating or reducing duplication of work, which in turn improves synergies that enable Ma’aden to sustain competitive growth.

Why did Ma’aden become a GMG Member?

We need to have a strong voice in the global mining industry to achieve our vision and have a global presence. This teamwork of mining operators, service providers and regulators results in core communication and collaboration that can lead to improved transparency across the industry and ultimately industry success, taking mining into the future in an agreed, controlled and collaborative manner.

GMG is considered a true collaboration center that could instill a governed conversation across the industry on core topics of improving the business of mining. The projects that GMG is undertaking collaboratively will lead to better solutions from vendors and lead to better success across Ma’aden.

David Scott Taylor will also be speaking at the GMG Perth Forum, August 14-15, about Ma’aden’s digital transformation journey and the value of embedding digitalization into the business from a top-down and bottom-up approach.