Greening of Diggers & Dealers is underway

by Ross Louthean, from Diggers & Dealers 2021 Fashionable metals remain in favour but this year’s Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum in Kalgoorlie went greener than it has ever been in its 30 years of operation. Keynote speaker Professor Ian Goldin of Oxford University, in his virtual presentation and press conference, emphasised the need for more climate change action from the mining sector. But his rider was that any action also had to take into account the massive debt countries, including Australia, were amassing in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. Prof Goldin also said battery metals would come to the fore and there would need to be minerals to support food supplies creation for a world facing areas of starvation through the pandemic. There was, he said, also a need to dial down the rhetoric on China or risk a new cold war. The big accounting firm Deloitte reiterated points from its recent report on the need for Australia’s mining sector to become more green. Then there were the presentations which, on day one, saw several speakers espouse their measures for de-carbonation of the planet, including IGO’s chief executive Peter Bradford. His company is one of the country’s major nickel producers largely for producing nickel sulphate for battery metals and now has a joint venture with China’s Tanqui Lithium Corporation, which operates the world-leading lithium mine at Greenbushes in Western Australia. Years ago when BHP purchased WMC Resources, primarily for its Olympic Dam copper-uranium-gold operation in South Australia, the also-acquired but unloved Nickel West operations became more of an ugly duckling. But today it probably stands behind the mining giant’s iron ore operations as a second outstanding swan. BHP is now lifting its nickel sulphate production, aided by a deal struck with Elon Musk’s Tesla electric vehicles for supply, with Nick Evans of The Australian reporting global nickel supply needs to grow by 1.3 million tonnes of metal in the next decade. One of the great mining corporate achievers of recent times, Bill Beament, is now an executive of junior VentureX Resources in which he became a big investor after the merger of his Northern Star Resources with Saracen to create Australia’s biggest gold miner. Mr Beament (pictured right) stressed that the company would place a major emphasis on decarbonised mining and engaging indigenous workers on a planned revival of the Sulphir Springs copper-zinc project in WA’s Pilbara. This year’s Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum has a record crowd of 2400 – and, like last year, only West Australians attending because of hard borders. This was despite the cancellation of several companies not able or willing at short notice to do virtual presentations. Their places were easily filled from the delegate waiting list, due to the investor climate and large number of new exploration IPOs – shown in two weeks last month were there was one new listing on the ASX every day. Again, a missing link was Queenslanders, who usually make up a large contingent of delegates and presenters. While the battery metals of lithium, nickel, copper, graphite and molybdenum were in favour, so was gold - which hasn’t lost its sheen at the past four Diggers & Dealers. Prof Goldin told Industry Queensland that gold should remain strong and would likely be more important than Bitcoin and other crypto currency, but debt-ridden nations now printing more money may need to curb their action. He felt the US dollar would be one of the major currencies that would hold its own, though the Japanese yen and the British pound may falter. Perth Mint chief executive Richard Hayes said minted gold sales in the year just ended took in $A2.24 billion worth of coins, 20 per cent higher than the previous year. He made it clear gold demand would remain strong for decades.

Greening of Diggers & Dealers is underway

Industry Queensland

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