(Bloomberg) — At the age of 16, Adam Lundin was lowered by helicopter into the remote wilderness of northern Canada.

For the son of a wealthy mining magnate, it was a kind of initiation. He spent the summer panning for gold, following grizzled prospectors and geologists, and roaming the boreal forest. He even dug holes to place the outdoor toilets. “I just wanted to stay busy,” he said.

Adam, 37, is now president of Lundin Mining Corp., a publicly traded Canadian metals producer. His younger brother, Jack, 34, is the company’s CEO. The Lundin boys, as they are known in Canada’s close-knit mining circles, are the two second sons of Lukas Lundin, a hard-working tycoon who inherited the company from his own father.

As the world races to make more clean energy products, many of the key companies that control large quantities of critical minerals are family-owned businesses, and the Lundin boys are part of a new generation taking the reins. They were set to inherit a commodities empire – copper, nickel and zinc mines across the Americas and Europe – as well as a family fortune estimated at $7.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg News.

But unlike other mining families, the Lundins do not have majority shareholders. Along with their two brothers Will and Harry, they collectively own 15.4% of Lundin Mining, making them the company’s second largest shareholder.

“We do this because we want to,” Jack said. “Not because we have to.”

In their 20s, Jack and Adam were put in charge of small businesses to test their business acumen. Jack was responsible for managing the Lundin Gold Inc. project in Ecuador, while Adam managed Filo Corp., a copper project in Argentina. They were each appointed to the boards of other Lundin-owned companies before eventually joining the upper echelons of Lundin Mining. Now, they get up almost every day at 5 a.m. to follow European commodity markets.

Through a family trust managed out of Geneva, Switzerland, the Lundins are also major shareholders in nearly a dozen other commodities companies, including Botswana-based diamond drilling company Lucara Diamond Corp. and ShaMaran Petroleum Corp., an oil explorer with assets in Iraq.

Few in the industry were surprised to see Adam and Jack succeed their father, but it happened sooner than expected, after Lukas died suddenly from brain cancer in 2022. Two Years Later , they are betting big on Argentina, where they have gained access to vast copper deposits, putting them at the forefront of a frenzy for natural resources in the inflation-ravaged country.

“As the world becomes electrified, we will all need a lot more copper,” Adam said from his Vancouver office, overlooking the jagged Pacific coast. “We can play a big role in this.”

Betting on a metal in a country that doesn’t yet produce much of it is in keeping with tradition: the Lundins built a reputation by frequenting places where few others were comfortable venturing.

Adolf H. Lundin was a Swedish wildcat who made his fortune with the 1976 discovery of a natural gas field off the coast of Qatar. In the European world of raw materials, his fanciful business adventures brought him fame and controversy. He invested in gold projects in South Africa during the apartheid era and in oil drilling in Sudan as the country was ravaged by civil war. (To date, the family’s defunct oil business is the subject of Sweden’s largest-ever criminal prosecution, over human rights abuses in Sudan.)

He was an “inveterate gambler, who always believed that riches were just around the corner,” said Pierre Lassonde, a Canadian mining financier and co-founder of Franco-Nevada Corp. “He drank a lot of alcohol,” he added.

Lukas’ brother Ian went into the oil business, exploring for oil sources in Africa and Europe. Lukas, meanwhile, helped expand the family business into the mining sector by entering into deals that resulted in the acquisition of a large portfolio of mines. He resettled in Canada in the late 1980s, as Vancouver became a hub for mineral explorers and developers.

Appetite for family adventure racing – Lukas has competed on a motorcycle in the Dakar Rally four times and has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice. A few months after his death, Jack climbed Mount Everest to pay his respects. Earlier this year, he completed a 75-mile, eight-hour cycling race across British Columbia.

To build a copper mining district in Argentina, the brothers will have to navigate the turbulent political and economic ups and downs of one of South America’s most unstable countries. The country’s new president, Javier Milei, has promised to accelerate resource extraction to help grow the economy.

“It’s a big gamble,” said Martin Pradier, an analyst at Veritas Investment Research Corp. “They are not just betting on this government. They are betting on the next ten governments.”

Building a mine is notoriously challenging, filled with uncertainty and cost overruns. Nowadays, most miners prefer to acquire already built operations rather than take the risk of building new ones. The Argentine projects are located in San Juan province, a largely depopulated region defined by the Andes and a vast arid desert. There are few roads and difficult access to the electricity network. “We have to build roads, we have to make people live at the foot of the mine,” Pradier said.

The brothers sought to manage the risks with outside help. In July, they recruited BHP Group Ltd., the world’s largest mining company, to take 50% of the Argentine project, forming a joint venture to build the district.

After Milei’s inauguration in January, Jack and Adam traveled to Buenos Aires to meet the new president and discuss the resources sector’s role in stabilizing a country plagued by inflation and investor apprehensions.

They walked out of the meeting with a selfie – Jack and Adam on either side of the new president, giving a thumbs up. And a few months later, Milei unveiled a vast package of tax, monetary and customs benefits aimed at large investors.

“It’s the best window I’ve ever seen in Argentina,” Adam said.

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