There is one iron law in the commodities business (pun intended). Only one. And it is this: the lowest marginal cost of production sets the price.
What that means in practice is that in the commodities business over time there is no competitive advantage other than the cost of production. It is dirt. There is no value-added, no fancy intellectual property edge, no process genius, no ‘better mouse trap’, other than getting that dirt out of the ground and shipped off to market the cheapest. That makes it a high volume, low margin business with huge advantages in economies of scale because the more you ship the more you’re costs can be amortised across larger tonnages.
That’s it, there is nothing else. As such, it is not a terribly competitive business usually because it does not need to be. Size ensures some margin but abundance and universal contestability are plenty to keep them slim. Miners are price takers not price makers.
