Why Australia’s miners must increase their focus on integration

Integration is one of the most powerful levers available for maximising deal value in mining M&A, and yet it continues to be an afterthought.

Dealmakers know the M&A failure rate is typically between 70-90%, and many recognise that integration is where value is often lost. But fewer appreciate the true effort and cost involved in bringing two businesses together and delivering the expected returns.

Which raises the question that every mining dealmaker should be asking when considering a deal: How can we ensure that we’re in the 10-30% that succeeds, and not leave value on the table?

In Australia’s mining sector right now, geopolitical uncertainty is undermining deal flow. Quality blue-chip assets are harder to come by, and more transactions involve assets with real complexity and risk. Greenfield projects face a long runway of regulatory, environmental, financial and logistical hurdles. For a commodity-driven sector like mining, the value window can be constrained, making integration planning a key driver in achieving value.

Layered over this is a distinctly Australian challenge: Australian businesses lag their more mature global counterparts on integration sophistication. In an environment where every acquisition needs to work harder, that lag matters.

PwC’s Aussie Mine 2025 report found total capex across Australia’s top 50 mid-tier miners fell 7.7% year-on-year—a sign that organic growth alone won’t deliver the value that operators need. M&A is a primary lever for growth, scale, diversification and new commodity exposure, adding pressure to get integration right.

What do companies with successful integrations do differently?

Integration thinking often starts too late, jeopardising success before a deal is inked. While deal diligence focuses on the decisions that come before the board—valuation, financial risk, legal exposure and, particularly in mining, technical assessment of the target—integration is generally considered an implementation issue, and transition planning doesn’t begin until much later in the process.

But integration is a valuation issue, too. The cost of transitioning and unlocking value from an acquisition—the resourcing required, the systems complexity, the cultural distance—are factors that shape what deal value is actually achieved.

Excluding integration from the diligence process comes at a cost. Mining organisations run the risk that deep knowledge of the deal rationale and valuation model is lost when integration and diligence are kept at arm’s length. Too often, the team who structure and negotiate the deal are not the same team tasked with implementing it, so the deal thesis never becomes part of the integration plan.

Underfunding can become a problem when integration is a separate, second phase. Often there’s a discrepancy between the synergy assumptions baked into the valuation and the actual budget allocated to making these real. Savvy organisations overcome this by planning their operating models at the outset and including integration upfront in the diligence process.

The rewards can be substantial. PwC research shows long-term operating models were planned during deal screening in 40% of successful M&A integrations, compared with just 27% for others. Prioritising integration from day one gives organisations a headstart on planning and delivering their transition strategies, technology plan and leadership team assessment. Integration planning belongs in the due diligence phase, not as an afterthought.

Just 14% of respondents in PwC’s M&A Integration Survey reported significant success when integrating. It’s not that organisations need to do more; that they need to focus their efforts.

Mining organisations typically run lean with high operational discipline and low overheads. Most of the time, this is a genuine competitive advantage, but there’s a sector tendency to reach for a checklist when faced with integration. The scale of work involved in integration is massive, and being overly focused on tasks and pushing teams to try to achieve everything can direct already-stretched people to low-value activities. It’s busyness, but not necessarily effectiveness or value creation.

Mining organisations must be realistic about their capabilities and capacities. Integration often falters because it assumes a level of capacity that simply doesn’t exist. People in the acquiring and target businesses already have business-as-usual roles, and yet they’re regularly asked to find additional capacity. The result? Existing operations lose resources, workstreams slow, and integration that was supposed to add value quietly steals it instead.

Top-performing organisations drop the checklist mentality in favour of a value-oriented approach. Rather than throwing energy and resources at attempting everything, they return to their deal thesis and desired outcomes, identifying the KPIs and key drivers that really matter.

Ask yourself: What will truly drive value? What delivers on the deal thesis? What will fundamentally change the risk profile of the business? Then design your integration plan based on this thinking, and not a checklist.

Between deal completion and the point where longer-term operating models, systems and processes are embedded, there is a transition window that many acquiring teams underuse. During this period, integration leaders need a practical plan across the core integration pillars to maintain governance, keep information flowing, support decision-making and protect value while the future-state model is still taking shape.

This often means putting in place fit-for-purpose interim solutions that are designed for speed, control and usability rather than perfection. For example, the Finance pillar can include pragmatic reporting, forecasting and control solutions that help teams operate effectively across disparate systems and unfamiliar data. Approaches such as PwC’s Modern Finance framework use tools the business already owns, enhanced with data models, automation and AI, to quickly establish governed reporting and decision support without committing to major system implementation at the outset.

Done well, this gives teams the ability to test, learn and refine during integration, while creating a practical bridge to a future-state environment that has a clear focus on delivering real value.

Learn more

Read the 20^th edition of PwC’s Aussie Mine report here.

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