While the South African mining industry is still grappling with the issues of the past, other mining jurisdictions like Australia and Canada are putting strong emphasis on the future.
After just coming off one of the largest mining investment periods in its history, Australia is now an economy in transition.
At the same time, Canada’s new Natural Resources Minister, Jim Carr, has outlined investment in innovative, clean technologies critical to ensuring sustainability as the new Liberal government’s key mining industry priorities.
While Australia has been best known for digging dirt and sending it off to market as fast as possible, it is now seeing increasing capital being devoted to other sectors of the economy, in the belief that diversity can provide increased economic resilience.
An idea of what Australia might do to keep mining afloat was given when BHP Billiton Australia operations president Mike Henry told the Melbourne Mining Club that mining’s sustainability would depend on its ability to drive competitiveness and margins through productivity.
To get the productivity, the industry needs technology, and Henry began at the exploration end, where he spoke of the advanced use of three-dimensional seismic know-how and hyperspectral downhole assaying to get to know orebodies in a far more intimate manner.
Next came his outline of the need for advanced heap leaching of copper ores, longwall top coal caving for increased extraction of thick underground coal seams and equipment automation.
His view is that innovation in technology and in the way personnel work will keep Australian mining going competitively in a world that is not staying as it is.
Chasing opportunities and leaning into the hard changes seem to be in store for everyone in mining.
Meanwhile, across the waters in Canada, Carr is committing the country to sustainable practices and low-carbon processes in a world that increasingly values these and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is putting $200-million a year towards supporting innovation and the use of clean technologies in the natural resources sectors.
Carr sees all this as heralding a ‘new age’ for mining, since new technologies rely heavily on mined copper, rare earths and rare metals that play an ever-increasing role in advanced technologies.
It is a changing mining world and South Africa needs to immerse itself far more deeply into the reality of platinum catalysts being essential for hydrogen fuel cells, which are not only efficient, versatile and scalable but also represent a proven technology that ensures clean, reliable and cost-effective power.
In doing so, this country can chase down an opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and, at the same time, be the planet’s best source of the clean zero-emissions electricity that the world is so desperately seeking.