Although global mining and metals advocacy group the ICMM's 26 members achieved a year-on-year reduction in fatalities to 39 for 2025, from 43 in 2024, the group stresses that fatalities have generally been increasing since 2021, reversing a previous downward trend.

This reinforces the need for a continued focus on fatal risk prevention and critical control effectiveness, the ICMM states.

“Safety is not negotiable. Behind every workplace fatality is a colleague, friend, parent, partner or child whose life was cut tragically short. While fatalities fell slightly this year, the broader trend since 2021 remains deeply concerning. Until every worker returns home safely, we must remain relentless in our efforts to eliminate fatalities across our industry.

“The re-emergence of catastrophic incidents is a stark reminder that critical controls are still failing too often. Addressing this starts with culture. We must strengthen safety cultures and ensure critical controls are consistently identified, implemented and verified. That is why we encourage the entire mining and metals industry to share lessons openly and regularly, maintain a commitment to safety at the highest levels of leadership and use the ICMM’s publicly available resources to help prevent future tragedies,” says ICMM president and CEO Rohitesh Dhawan.

The ICMM's data shows that two catastrophic incidents accounted for 13 fatalities, with the other 26 being single-fatality events. This means that the total number of fatal incidents had decreased by 24% year-on-year.

On another positive note, the ICMM points out that 14 of its 26 members reported no fatalities during 2025, compared with 9 of the 24 members that recorded no fatal incidents in 2024.

Meanwhile, the advisory body notes that fall-of-ground (FoG) and mobile equipment incidents were the most frequently recorded hazards in 2025, with each accounting for ten fatalities. All FoG fatalities occurred in underground operations, while mobile equipment fatalities were recorded across underground operations, other process areas and public roads.

FoG and inrush or outburst incidents were also the causes of the two catastrophic incidents, in Chile and Indonesia, respectively.

Working-at-height incidents accounted for seven fatalities in 2025, while inrush or outburst events accounted for a further seven fatalities.

Together, these four hazards were responsible for 34 of the 39 fatalities.

Geographically, the greatest number of fatalities occurred in South America and Africa, with each region having recorded 11 fatalities in 2025. No fatalities were recorded in Europe within the ICMM membership.

ICMM's members in South Africa recorded six fatalities, accounting for 15% of total fatalities reported by ICMM member companies. 

This was lower only than Indonesia, with eight fatalities, and equal to Chile, which also recorded six fatalities.

Nevertheless, South Africa’s 2025 fatality count was its lowest in the 2020 to 2025 period and represented a 62.5% reduction compared with 2024, when 16 fatalities were recorded. All but one of the fatalities in South Africa occurred in underground operations, reinforcing the continued importance of risk management and critical control verification in underground mining.

INJURIES
Meanwhile, ICMM member companies reported 6 183 total recordable injuries in 2025 – the lowest number since the ICMM began collecting member safety performance data in 2012.

The total recordable injury frequency rate also reached its lowest recorded level at 2.21 per million hours worked, compared with 5.07 in 2012.