Jemma,What I mean is you need to go out there either in person...

Jemma,

What I mean is you need to go out there either in person or via phone and speak to their customers, suppliers, competitors (both private and public) - from all over the world.

Then comes the politics/economics part: Canadian oil sands movement, Keystone XL pipeline, China's move towards importing low-sulphur coal etc. Amidst all the doom and gloom wrt to coal Germany is increasing lignite coal use and Glencore is increasing their coal investments. You can google all this.

Then comes the business analysis part: what are miners currently doing - digging from "cheap ores" - they've done this for almost two years and soon, they will need to remove overburdens. Plus their mining trucks have been working non-stop, so needs an overhaul etc.

There's a lot more i.e. financials, history, management etc.

This is full-supply chain research.