Gavin Wendt

We are in the midst of what is an embryonic resource sector recovery, it's still early days, of course.

Big iron ore projects of this scale are no longer warranted and there's widespread recognition of this in the marketplace.

We won't be seeing any more of these mega-projects coming out of the Pilbara for many years, if not decades, the market's just not there anymore.

KKR's move probably said as much about the longer-term value of Australian copper mining in general as it did about Oz Minerals.

The confluence of big overseas miners looking to repatriate to their home bases and strong indicators such as a weaker Aussie dollar is driving the market further into M&A activity, add in cheap labor post the boom and a vibrant mid-tier gold sector and it's not hard to see why things are accelerating.

For both companies, this is about wielding the greatest influence possible over the global marketplace, having said that, unlike in the highly concentrated iron ore space where the focus is squarely on one market owned in large part by Rio and BHP - China, copper is sold much more widely, leaving room for smaller producers to stay in the game.