What High Prices Actually Reveal About Your Organization

Gold at $2,800. Your AISC at $1,100. Margins that would make a tech CEO jealous. Your board wants dividends. Your shareholders want buybacks. Your government wants windfall taxes. And somewhere in this noise, you're supposed to be building a company that matters in 2040.

The Stakes of Reinvention

When the excavators first tore into the familiar contours of Leidsenhage Shopping Center, few could have imagined the scale of the metamorphosis about to unfold. Beneath the cranes and scaffolding in Leidschendam-Voorburg, on the western edge of the Randstad, a €570 million experiment in urban reinvention was taking shape.

When Business Excellence last profiled Mota-Engil in 2021 under the banner “Hand in Hand with Africa in a Shared Future,” the emphasis was clear: this was a company deeply rooted in Africa, working side by side with communities and governments to deliver transformative infrastructure. Then-CEO Manuel Mota described Mota-Engil as “an African company as much as a Portuguese one,” pointing to its 75-year history on the continent, from the 4th of April Bridge to Luanda Bay.

When Orica Mongolia LLC opened its doors in 2004, Mongolia’s mining industry was entering a new era. The Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project was gathering momentum, coal exports were climbing, and global demand was pulling the country’s mineral wealth onto the world stage. For Orica, a subsidiary of the Australia-based Orica Group—one of the world’s leading blasting and mining technology companies—the move was natural.