When projects were assessed for last year's handbook in March 2020, COVID-19 was rearing its head in almost every corner of the world causing widespread shutdowns of mines and disrupting global production.

In terms of projects featured in the previous edition, the demand shock was reflected in plummeting ‘Confidence' ratings, which pits the base case commodity price assumptions against current spot prices to get a feel for the durability of an asset in a downturn.

Looking at copper, no single asset scored above 2.6/10 for its ‘Confidence' rating in 2020.

Yet copper recovered perhaps a lot quicker from COVID-19 shock than the market anticipated. With this, of course, ‘Confidence' ratings have much improved. In 2021, no asset scored less than 7/10 on ‘Confidence'.

Beyond base metals, the PPH also features outlooks for precious metals, battery metals, fertilisers and bulks, with an in depth look at the stand out projects across the commodities spectrum.

It focuses on what Mining Journal Intelligence rates as the best investment opportunities based on, essentially, overall returns and the risk to those returns.

The database underpinning the PPH is dominated by precious metals projects, and interesting, despite government pledges to "build back green", there has not been an influx of battery minerals projects into the pipeline.