While it has always been relatively easy to collate the world’s top 10 gold miners because they are all primary producers (see: Barrick only top gold miner to see output fall in H1 2014), to do the same for silver is not nearly such an easy task as most of the world’s silver is produced as a by- or co-product of gold and base metals mining. Thus in the table of the top 10 global silver producers shown below only four could be classified as primary silver miners – and virtually all those will, in any case, also be producing other metals – notably gold, lead and zinc – as very significant by products without which they would perhaps not be profitable mining companies.