The WA Mining Club Young Professionals’ final networking event of 2020 attracted more than 200 members to the Ritz Carlton, where a panel of industry leaders discussed ‘Risk, Exploration and Technology’ in relation to recent socio-economic impacts on the sector felt around the world.
The panel included Gold Road Resources GIS Geologist Jordan Rogers, Blackstone Minerals Managing Director Scott Williamson and Chalice Gold Mines Managing Director Alex Dorsch, with the discussion moderated by Unearthed Principal Industry Engagement Holly Bridgwater.
Ms Bridgwater kicked off the conversation by diving straight into a curly question, asking speakers what their thoughts were on possible implications for the Australian mining industry given the recent outcome of the US presidential election.
“From a gold industry perspective, Trump was actually very good for the gold price. With Biden taking up the reins we are going to see a weakening gold price but the humanist in me doesn’t take too much offence to that. Biden’s government is going to reintroduce stability and the global market is going to regain confidence in the US, so that’s only going to benefit everyone,” said Ms Rogers.
Looking specifically at exploration, speakers were asked what exciting technology we should look out for or business models we should investigate.
“Geophysics is what excites me the most at the moment,” said Mr Williamson.
“The ability to go into new areas that have been previously explored with technology that was used 20 years ago or even 5-10 years ago, and being able to go through with modern geophysics and see deeper undercover and to see what the previous explorers didn’t see.
“The other one is probably metallurgy – what we’re seeing in this space is really some smart engineering around nickel and base metals metallurgy. So, they’re the real key drivers particularly from a Blackstone perspective. From a mining engineering perspective, I suppose it’s all about the electrification of equipment and automation as well,” Mr Williamson added.
Ms Rogers commented from her role in GIS and data science.
“Gold Road are a sponsor and early adopter of a tech called ‘Detector’, which we see has massive potential to disrupt the greenfields gold exploration industry. It has the capability of rapid overturn of low-level gold analysis – they were talking about 6 to 8 hours of up to 20 parts per billion detection level of field samples – so you are able to rapidly follow up and turnover a project and targets and assessments, which has massive ramifications especially for juniors, who might be really restricted in their field seasons or moving targets through to the market,” she explained.
Mr Dorsch further noted that artificial intelligence was a good thing for industry and should be embraced.
“What excites me in that greenfields space is artificial intelligence and I don’t think any geologists in the room should be worried about it. I think if anything, it’s just going to make geologists much more effective. It has the ability to do in seconds what 100 people locked in a room for 8 hours would do. You’re able to see things in data that the human eye just can’t see. So, what excites me is just how many potential discoveries are out there,” said Mr Dorsch.
“It has been interesting to see that a lot of exploration companies have been pulling back to Australia in the last few years, just because some jurisdictions become more problematic. It has been very fruitful for Australia; all these explorers coming back to home soil and really starting to push the boundaries down at depth has resulted in some fantastic discoveries around Australia. I think that trend’s only going to continue,” Mr Dorsch added.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics data, exploration for gold increased by 17% to $356 million, compared with the 6% quarter-on-quarter increase across all minerals (to $702 million).
Speakers were also asked to divulge some of the biggest risks they had taken in their career to date.
“Luckily, ‘risk’ depends on your perspective. Personally, the biggest risk I’ve taken in my career would have been to spend the formative years of my career with a junior – now mid-tier – company. There’s always moments of uncertainty in either job security, cashflow, takeover depending on the success that you’re having. But on the other hand, I was granted opportunities that I wouldn’t have gotten in the first 10-15 years of my career if I had gone to one of the majors. I represented Gold Road at Diggers & Dealers and over in Colorado at Precious Metals; I’ve been able to travel for courses over east; and was able to take a further risk, which was to move from my focus on field geology into my post-graduate - geographic information science (GIS). Thankfully, I was fully supported by the company and now am working in that roll full time,” said Ms Rogers.
To conclude the discussion, each speaker offered the young professionals in the room with some parting advice – some core skills that they should look to obtain in order to be successful in exploration.
“A really critical soft skill that people need to be able to develop is resilience – this is a turbulent industry and if you focus on exploration you are going to have to roll with the punches and get back up. If you haven’t developed any resilience you’re going to get burnt out and end up leaving the industry completely.
“Also, every day our industry is more and more technologically-focused. As we go undercover, we rely more and more in our technology. So, having that technological competency, that basic data science intelligence is going to be really critical over the coming years,” said Ms Rogers.
“My advice would be don’t focus too much on the role or the title or what you’re doing at any particular point in your career but focus on who your leaders are and your mentors. Choose your path based on the people that you’re working for,” said Mr Williamson.
“When people join my company, I talk about problem solving, which applies to almost every discipline. Your ability to solve a complex problem by splitting it into multiple smaller simpler problems is a critical skill, no matter what you do. On the flip side to that, is communication. There’s no point in being really good at solving a problem and then holding that solution to yourself. You need to be able to communicate what you did and why you did it. On a third point, is value. You need to understand no matter whether you are at the bottom of an organisation or at the top, you need to understand how that business actually makes money and how you can add value to that business,” said Mr Dorsch.
About the WA Mining Club Young Professionals
The WA Mining Club Young Professionals aspires to drive diversification and innovation within the mining industry, by supporting the growth and development of members and their careers through connection and collaboration. To become a member, or support the next generation of young leaders as annual partners and event sponsors contact youngprofessionals@waminingclub.asn.au