Australian gold miner Newcrest Mining focused more on Ecuador-focused explorer SolGold project, which was developing the Cascabel copper-gold project.

This project will boost up Newcrest’s strong position in SolGold against No.2 shareholder, BHP. Newcrest was increasing its stake in the junior miner to 15.33% from 13.83%. BHP and Newcrest was competing with each other in the miners' business.

Miners were working hard for copper projects as the demand will increase and exceed the supply in 2020. The strong demand for power generation and electric vehicles will move up greatly. Power generation and electric vehicles both needed copper raw material as there were an electric bus of 300kg copper and nine tons per windfarm megawatt.

Ecuador has become the great mining investment in the past two years with a revised regulatory framework and a major investor engagement marketing.