Mike Henry

Chief Executive Officer, BHP

BHP Group

The quiet heavyweight of global mining — steering BHP toward copper and potash while holding sector-leading iron-ore cost leadership through operational discipline.

At the start of 2025, BHP remained the mining industry’s quiet heavyweight. Iron-ore volumes from the Pilbara continued to set efficiency benchmarks. Copper production was tracking toward the two-million-tonne mark. The Jansen potash project in Canada was advancing as a multi-decade growth option. And the company’s operating margins stayed among the highest in the sector.

Mike Henry, the Canadian-born chemist who had taken the CEO role on the first day of 2020, was not given to dramatic pronouncements. His approach was operational and incremental: safer mines, lower costs, simpler portfolio, and a deliberate tilt toward the commodities the energy transition and global growth would require. Critics sometimes wanted more aggressive M&A or faster volume growth. Supporters pointed to the results—sector-leading iron-ore costs, rising copper contribution, disciplined capital allocation, and a company that looked more resilient than the one he inherited. The controversy, such as it was, centred on pace and style. Henry preferred steady compounding over headline deals.

Mike Henry matters at the beginning of 2025 because BHP is the largest and most influential diversified miner in the Western world, and under his leadership it has become a clearer copper-and-future-facing story while retaining the world’s lowest-cost major iron-ore business. In a market defined by copper scarcity, energy-transition demand and the need for reliable bulk commodities, BHP’s capital allocation and operational performance set the tone for the entire sector.

For NES readers focused on energy, business and strategic minerals, Henry represents the large-scale, long-life asset model applied with unusual operational discipline across iron ore, copper and potash.