By Niudao Finance

NextFin News -- A mining company in Central China's Henan province quietly completed the acquisition closing of four gold mines in Brazil in 40 days. The company is CMOC Group. The very mining heavyweight was best known for copper, cobalt and molybdenum, and it has made a decisive foray into gold mines.

Its acquisition speed was as fast as a bolt of lightning: before the outside world could even react, Ecuador’s Cangahua gold mine was already in its pocket.

The company’s 2025 annual report showed that full-year profit topped RMB 20 billion for the first time, setting new all-time records for five consecutive years. Its share price more than quadrupled in a year, and its market cap at its peak surged to RMB 550 billion.

What’s astonishing, though, is that despite being such a powerhouse, the outside world knows almost nothing about the person pulling the strings behind it.

The Quiet Mining King

Search Yu Yong on Chinese search engine Baidu, and you’ll find not many results.

Unlike other tycoons, he doesn’t make headlines every day, nor is he the kind of boss who likes to hold court in the media.

He holds no position at CMOC Group—he isn’t the chairman, isn’t the CEO, and doesn’t even carry a consultant title.

When the company went public and rang the opening bell, he didn’t show up.

You won’t find a message from him in the annual report. And at shareholder meetings, you won’t see him either.

In public records, the most you’ll see about him is this: in his early years, he worked at a paper mill.

Yet it was this very man who, back then, pulled CMOC out from the brink of bankruptcy—and then, step by step, remade it into today’s “global mining hunter.”

What was CMOC like in 2004?

Deep in the red. More than half of its 6,000-plus workers were sent home, and even those still on the job struggled to get paid 400 yuan a month. The local government pushed a mixed-ownership reform and put this “juicy asset” on the table.

Big names like Fosun and Zijin Mining all showed up. Hongshang Group—Yu Yong’s company—was hardly noticeable among the crowd of suitors.

Its bid wasn’t the highest, but the terms it offered seemed the most “sincere”: it wouldn’t seek control.

It bought 49% for 178 million yuan, with more than 40 million yuan earmarked to compensate laid-off employees.

What came next was where it got interesting: it shut down inefficient plants, brought in advanced flotation technology, and bypassed middlemen to do business directly with Europe’s steel giants. It turned losses into profits in a year; in two years, profits surged to 1.7 billion yuan.

It listed in Hong Kong in 2007 and on the A-share market in 2012. By 2014, Hongshang kept buying in the secondary market, pushing its stake above that of the original controlling shareholder—making Yu Yong the de facto controller.

Outsiders like to describe this chapter as “ten years of lying low.”

But Niudao believes this guy was more like a hunter—crouched motionless in the grass, waiting for the prey to come within range.

A Bottom-fishing Maniac

What truly convinced people about Yu Yong was his timing.

In 2008, global metal prices collapsed, and CMOC’s profits were squeezed as well. In 2012, total profit fell 40% year on year. The long bear market in commodities lasted until 2018.

During that period, China’s mining companies kicked off their first wave of going global. CMOC also mapped out a global plan, but Yu Yong held off on making a move.

What was he waiting for? For others to run out of strength.

In 2013, as the global mining sector stayed sluggish, international giants were forced to sell off core assets.

Yu Yong made his move—$820 million to take Australia’s NPM copper-gold mine from Rio Tinto. At the time, CMOC’s annual net profit was only around the RMB 1 billion level; swallowing up Australia’s fourth-largest copper-gold mine sent shockwaves through the industry.

Then he hit the brakes again, spending three years digesting the asset.

By 2015, that mine contributed 42% of the company’s total profit. In 2016, the global mining industry reached what was widely seen as its “deep-freeze moment.” Most miners were pulling back, but Yu Yong went on the offensive.

Within a single year, he made two blockbuster acquisitions: $1.5 billion for Anglo American’s niobium-phosphate project in Brazil, and $2.65 billion for Freeport’s Tenke copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

At the time, the market thought he’d lost it—especially that cobalt mine, which was practically “a niche within a niche.”

When Chinese companies went overseas to buy mines, they went for iron ore, copper, or gold—who went after cobalt? But Yu Yong had one thing figured out:

New energy vehicles were about to take off.

Cobalt is a key input for ternary (NCM/NCA) batteries. Not long after the deal closed, global EV sales surged, cobalt prices doubled, and copper prices rose 30%. The Tenke mine became a “cash cow.”

Later, he also secured the adjacent KFM mine and forged deep ties with CATL. Hongshang had invested in CATL as early as 2016 and, over time, built a stake of more than 20 million shares. In 2022, CATL took an equity stake in CMOC via a subsidiary, becoming its second-largest shareholder.

By then, CMOC had become the world’s No. 1 cobalt producer, with a global share close to 40%.

Around 2017, Chinese companies rushed overseas to grab lithium mines; that year alone saw nearly 20 acquisitions. Later, lithium prices plunged from 500,000 yuan per ton to 100,000 yuan per ton, and Ganfeng and Tianqi lost so badly they could hardly face anyone.

What about CMOC? It didn’t touch lithium—yet it feasted on cobalt and copper. Last year, revenue from its copper products reached 55.096 billion yuan, up more than 30% year on year, with a gross margin as high as 50%.

What’s the biggest difference between Yu Yong and traditional mine bosses? He doesn’t just know how to dig—he knows how to play finance.

In 2019, CMOC spent US$500 million to acquire IXM (ECS), the world’s third-largest base-metals trader. From then on, it was no longer simply a mining company, but a “resource investment + operations platform.”

What’s IXM good for? Three words: steady, precise, ruthless.

Steady—risk hedging. Commodity prices swing hard, and production cycles are long. With a trader in-house, it can deliver against spot cargoes at any time, instead of being forced to dump output at fire-sale prices.

Precise—an information edge. IXM holds real-time global data on supply and demand, inventories, and logistics. Whether to ramp up or cut back, it knows three months earlier than its peers.

Ruthless—direct access to downstream buyers. All output from its own mines is sold through IXM, so it doesn’t rely on third parties or get squeezed on price. For a special mineral like cobalt, it can sell straight to battery makers—middlemen shouldn’t expect to skim the spread.

That’s CMOC’s biggest difference from everyone else.

While other mining companies follow a linear “exploration–extraction–sales” model, it operates as a “resource investment platform.”

When it spots a mine that’s cheap and has upside, it buys it, quickly “absorbs” it into its own system, and then waits for the cycle to cash in.

Its gold-mine acquisition last year followed the same playbook.

Lumina Gold, a company mired in a debt crisis, held the Cangrejos gold mine, but it was bogged down by environmental lawsuits and community protests; the project had been stalled for a decade. No major miner worldwide dared touch it.

China Molybdenum secured it for about RMB 3 billion, at an implied price of RMB 4.8 per gram per tonne of contained resources—far below the global average of RMB 44 per gram.

It wrapped up the environmental assessment in six months and signed a benefit-sharing agreement with Indigenous communities, cutting the EIA timeline from the industry average of 36 months to 18 months.

That’s its “localization” capability.

In the DRC—seen by Western miners as a “high-risk no-go zone”—it has run stable operations for more than a decade.

The local government sees it as a “development partner,” not a “predator.”

When the DRC announced cobalt export quotas last year, China Molybdenum received the largest allocation—6,500 tonnes, or 35.9% of the total—leaving even the global commodity giants behind.

Next Goals

On the 2025 Hurun Rich List, Yu Yong ranked 46th with a fortune of RMB 95 billion. He kept a low profile for two decades, but numbers don’t lie.

In its board letter this year, China Molybdenum wrote:

“2026 is the year CMOC ushers in a new era. What we aim to build is a world-class mining company that is globally leading and truly one of a kind.”

As for what the next target is? No one knows.

But judging by Yu Yong’s playbook, chances are it’ll be some “unpopular” asset no one else dares touch—some unlucky soul crushed by debt, some forgotten corner of the market.

Then when the cycle turns, everyone’s left shouting: Holy shit—how did he nail it again?

That’s the survival philosophy of the “invisible mining king”: he doesn’t dance under the spotlight; he takes aim in the dark.

By the time you notice him, he’s already pulled the trigger.