Kumba Iron Ore forecasts 23% profit rise driven by market gains

Kumba Iron Ore said it expects its full-year profit to increase by as much as 23%, driven by higher mineral prices and sales volumes.

Image credit: Graeme Williams, Media Club, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Kumba, a unit of Anglo American, said it expects headline earnings between R13.9bn and R15.33bn for the year ended December 2025, compared with R12.5bn the previous year.

Africa's top iron ore miner said the increase in earnings was mainly due to a higher average realised free-on-board export iron ore price of $95 per wet metric tonne in 2025, from $92 a wet metric tonne the year before. Sales volumes increased 2% to 37 million metric tonnes.

Iron ore market prices were supported by resilient Chinese pig iron production, on the back of strong export demand and stable supply from the major iron ore producers, Kumba said in a trading update.

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Kumba said it reduced its on-mine iron ore stockpile to 5.7 million metric tonnes at the end of December 2025, down from 6.9 million metric tonnes at the close of the previous year, reflecting improvements in freight rail logistics performance.

Port stock levels rose to 1.8 million metric tonnes at the end of 2025, from 0.5 million metric tonnes in December 2024.

The company will release its 2025 financial results on 19 February.