Voices of Resourcing Tomorrow 2024
- 24 December 2024
Resourcing Tomorrow 2024 packed an enormous amount of high-level discussion and debate into three conference days plus a half-day Government Roundtable event that drew more than 100 government and industry leaders to the London Stock Exchange. Suffice to say, there was no shortage of thought-provoking and colourful extracts from more than 300 speakers who contributed to this year’s blockbuster event.
Following is some of what Mining Beacon editor Richard Roberts heard at the conference, which this year used a “breakout out of the echo chamber” theme and featured many non-mining participants.
Inside the echo chamber
“Echo chambers can be really powerful and useful spaces and there are a number of issues in the mining industry that are unresolved and which need the positive force of an echo chamber to work through.” – International Council on Mining and Metals CEO, Rohitesh Dhawan
“I do get quite a bit of pushback sometimes from part of the industry that there’s a sort of negative presumption in relation to mining. And there is, quite frankly. Lots of investors simply don't invest in the sector, underweight it and treat as ethically or ESG compromised.” – chair of the Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030, Adam Matthews
“I know so many investors that just don't invest in mining companies at all and will not consider it. What we can do, though, is influence their customers to put pressure on the mining companies to adopt better practice and hopefully through forums like this express how investable miners might become were they to perhaps redeem for past mistakes, improve credibility and put in standards that improve governance, improve social responsibility and prevent the sort of accidents and atrocities that have happened in the past.” – Stewart Investors analyst and portfolio manager, Chris McGoldrick
“On current numbers … there’s about 200 billion tonnes of tailings currently being managed and with a need for more critical metals to power the energy transition and sustainable development goals going forward, that is set to increase by another 40-to-50 billion tonnes over the next five years.” – Met4Tech postdoctoral research fellow, Dr Eva Marquis
“I think it's extremely important to try and rehabilitate not only the waste but the reputation of our sector.” – CoTec Holdings CEO, Julian Treger
“I think there are lots of echo chambers. By and large the same thing is being said in each echo chamber. We’ve got to get the siloes broken down. We’ve got to get the industry, the suppliers, the regulators, governments, communities and potential future employees aligned around what is needed in the industry and then drive the policy changes that are required.” – Weir Group CEO, Jon Stanton
“If we’re going to deliver a planet for our children’s children’s children we’ve got to do things differently.” – Barrick CEO, Mark Bristow
“Engaging early with the indigenous community allows for the protection of your investment.” – Cree Nation grand chief of the Eeyou Istchee territory, Mandy Gull-Masty
“The oil and gas sector represents a very large human capital resource that's now available to the mining sector, where people are often wanting to leave that industry and take their skills elsewhere.” – Eldorado Gold chief financial officer, Paul Ferneyhough
“Our social progress report at ICMM has shown that on average, people in mining-dependent countries are healthier, they are wealthier, and they are better educated compared to countries that are not mining-dependent.” – International Council on Mining and Metals CEO, Rohitesh Dhawan
Geopolitical fallout
“There’s another driver that is, in my view, a game changer and that is the immediate and existential threat on our borders. The rise of the defence agenda is going to drive prioritisation in industrial value chains [and] focus industrial policies. And to some extent it will drive also a new societal debate about the value and the necessity of minerals. It’s not about our iPad. It’s going to be about missiles.” – Latitude Five managing partner, Ludivine Wouters
“We’re balkanising the world economy and this is going to be insanely inflationary.” – Ivanhoe Mines executive co-chair, Robert Friedland
“Geopolitics sounds like such a nice word but effectively it's a war for minerals that's breaking out. And we build parallel value chains ... trade walls. I don't think that's the answer to it. The answer must be different.” – Saudi Gold Refinery CEO, Jonathan Cordero
“We’ve seen China and other countries being very open about their willingness to go after supplies of critical minerals, not just within their own borders but elsewhere, as well as the processing of those critical minerals. And I think that reflects a realisation that whoever controls the production of lithium and copper and nickel and other critical minerals will control the 21st century economy the way the control of oil defined the 20th century economy.” – Reuters journalist and The War Below author, Ernest Scheyder
“We’re getting to the stage now where we think you can count on a saw miller’s hand the number of jurisdictions that are safe for 25 years. And that makes the purchase of assets very difficult.” – Hancock Prospecting director, Ian Plimer
“Drone warfare, artificial intelligence, data centres … are all linked for military application. And their demand for copper competes with the copper we need for the energy transition.” – Ivanhoe Mines executive co-chair, Robert Friedland
“If you look at rare earths and the defence applications … where’s that going to come from? It's not going to come from the US. It is not going to come from China either.” – Appian Capital Advisory head of global affairs, Dominic Raab
“What is the question we’re seeking to solve for? I would say it is to improve the security situation of the United States. That goes to the industrial base, including the development of clean energy technologies, but also things like the defence systems that are required that use some of these key and niche critical metals.” – Fannon Global Advisors managing director and former US Bureau of Energy Resources assistant secretary of state, Frank Fannon
“The energy transition will fail if one country controls the materials processing and manufacturing of future energy technologies. That was true eight years ago and it's true today.” – US assistant secretary of state for Energy Resources, Geoffrey Pyatt
“We really need to focus on doing things differently not trying to do more of what the Chinese are doing and more of what we did last year and 10 years ago. It's not going to work. We'll continue to fail the world.” – TechMet CEO and chair, Brian Menell
“The reality is China is way ahead of us. They're winning. And all the tariffs and all of the policies in the world aren't going to change that.” – ARCH Emerging Markets Partners managing director, Amanda Van Dyke
“I think it's very difficult to put a line on the planet and say everything on this side cannot depend on the other side. I think the world is already way too intertwined. The supply chains are fully intertwined and the market will regulate.” – FOS Associates CEO, Marcos Camhis
Financing future mineral projects
“In my career I’ve never seen so many shovel-ready projects that can’t be financed.” – Global Mining Capital CEO, Keith Spence
“We have a mining industry that's funded with net present value models which are created by complete idiots for complete idiots ... China never paid any attention to net present value models. They just paid more. And now that China controls the supply chain for almost everything useful.” – Ivanhoe Mines executive co-chair, Robert Friedland
“By the time you build the mine and start producing you are looking at 25 years from a geological idea to having the mine built. And then you start producing and you’re producing for 25 years. Now most of you are going to be dead in that 50-year period ... I won't be. I will still be ticking along don't you worry about that. But you have to have very patient investors.” – Hancock Prospecting director, Ian Plimer
“Capital isn’t patient enough and it’s a stain on our industry that that’s the case.” – Stewart Investors analyst and portfolio manager, Chris McGoldrick
“The challenge we have is the vast majority of investors underweight mining, significantly exclude it, or have filters that basically mean that it is a very insignificant part of their portfolio.” – chair of the Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030, Adam Matthews
“The sector requires about $6 trillion in investments by 2035. That is four-times the market capitalisation of the top 20 mining companies in the sector. To bridge this gap the industry needs to attract significant new capital, potentially opening doors for new players, including oil and gas companies.” – Saudi Arabia Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources vice-minister for mining affairs, HE Khalid Al-Mudaifer
Tech-time? It’s now or never
“As an industry we need to discover more, produce more and do it better and more sustainably than historically has ever been accomplished.” – White & Case mining and metals team head, Rebecca Campbell
“Mining is sort of a 600-year-old enterprise. We still crush rock with compressive force. It takes a huge amount of energy to bash rock together and get the metal out of it. That has to change. Everything has to change.” – Ivanhoe Mines executive co-chair, Robert Friedland
“It’s one thing to develop a technology, it’s a whole other thing to implement it and roll it out. That takes a lot of resources, both human resources and capital resources. So it’s a money-driven business.” – Ivanhoe Electric CEO, Taylor Melvin
“Prediction of the future is notoriously difficult and most efforts are wrong. We see examples all the time. And AI, in spite of the hype, is generally no better. But we’re in an industry that needs to grapple seriously with what the future holds.” – CITIC Pacific Mining general manager for digital technology & innovation, Mark O’Brien
“It’s not as if we’re waiting for something to come over the horizon to save us. A lot of the technology is there. We just have to drive the adoption across the industry.” – Weir Group CEO, Jon Stanton
Commodities and M&A
“Taking lithium as an example, by 2040 we need 40 times more refineries than exist today. For every refinery in China today we need 39 new refineries to be built over the next 15 or 16 years. So the opportunity is tremendous.” – Green Lithium CEO, Sean Sargent
“The transition to clean energy is driving demand for this strategic metal [copper] to levels which will soon no longer be satisfied from existing production.” – Barrick CEO, Mark Bristow
“Gold is on everyone's lips, but not in all portfolios.” – Incrementum managing partner, Ronald-Peter Stoferle
“It’s difficult to find tier one or frankly even tier two copper assets in a sensible jurisdiction. [Copper] will always be an active market in terms of M&A.” – Tembo Capital CEO, David Street
“People have achieved quite good outcomes on M&A for things in countries like Namibia and Botswana where it's feasible for Western buyers and for Chinese buyers to both have an interest … [which] I think is an interesting dynamic.” – Tembo Capital CEO, David Street
“We look for tier one assets. We're a private company. We essentially have one shareholder and we can talk to her at any time. She's currently in London. We can move very, very quickly. We don't have to go through all sorts of meetings of committees and subcommittees. We’re very cashed up. I think we've probably got about $26 billion sitting in the bank.” – Hancock Prospecting director, Ian Plimer
