How Anglo American Transformed Global Raw Materials Sales

Anglo American operates a global commercial structure across key regional hubs in Brazil, London, Singapore, and Shanghai. While the company has long invested in digitalising its mining operations, its commercial and sales workflows remained decentralised and manually driven.

In a shifting market landscape, with rising customer expectations and more agile competition, the company identified a clear mandate to standardise how it captures enquiries, optimise how it allocates material, and ensure every ton sold delivers maximum commercial value.

The enquiry‑to‑contract journey was fragmented. Regional teams captured enquiries on local spreadsheets and formats varied by market: WeChat in China, email or WhatsApp in Europe. Pricing analysis happened in silos, and teams optimised locally instead of globally, creating blind spots.

Inventory management lacked rigour. Stock in warehouses was allocated inconsistently, and at times, the same ton was booked multiple times. There was no unified platform, making data insecure, inconsistent, and unusable for global benchmarking.

John Eastwood, Head of Sales at Anglo American, described how “enquiries came in via different media,” yet all were captured in standalone spreadsheets, hindering consistent analysis. The result was missed performance opportunities and a costly lack of transparency.

Anglo implemented Metalshub as the unified platform to capture all enquiries from the platform itself and off‑platform sources. Data input became standardised across regions, formats and points of entry. That foundational step enabled centralised analytics and visibility, while keeping decision‑making decentralised.

Local teams in Singapore, for instance, could plug in enquiries and instantly compare similar offers globally across Europe, North and South America and China and choose the allocation that maximised netback value. The enquiry‑to‑contract workflow was fully linked with inventory data, preventing duplicate sales and enabling accurate fulfilment.

Metalshub’s platform helped Anglo deliver new capabilities:

• Consistent benchmarking: via netback comparisons across regions, customers and offers
• Quantifiable performance tracking: enquiries received vs live orders secured, converted at the customer level
• Enhanced customer engagement: using data‑informed feedback to refine propositions rather than relying on assumptions
• Inventory optimisation: precise allocation of physical product at origin and in storage.

Performance metrics became granular, flexible, and transparent. The global team could now see deals done by other hubs, share insights, and optimise regionally with global context.

Return on investment exceeded expectations. Data visibility and high‑performance orientation replaced gut‑feel decision‑making. The platform helped Anglo unlock value, drive pricing integrity, and secure better market outcomes. John Eastwood emphasised that teams now rely on structured insights to assess pricing, allocation, and customer performance rather than assumption or inertia.

Anglo continues to invest in platform maturity. Next steps include integration with trade‑capture and post‑trade systems, enabling seamless end‑to‑end flows across the customer lifecycle.

Metalshub is also exploring AI automation to reduce manual data entry and streamline enquiry intake, such as auto‑populating fields from emails. Anglo expects AI to support efficiency, not replace the critical role of salespeople. Human relationships remain central, underpinned by data‑driven decisions, and Metalshub is at the heart of that.

Anglo American’s deployment of Metalshub transformed a fragmented, spreadsheet‑driven enquiry process into a transparent, secure, and analytically robust platform. It delivered measurable benefits in allocation, netback optimisation, and performance visibility. By aligning team incentives around global value rather than local volume, the company enabled smarter decisions and stronger market outcomes, preparing for full integration and AI‑enabled scale in the near term.