mining innovation
If you still think “energy recovery” belongs in the sustainability chapter of the annual report, Rockwell Automation would like a quiet word – preferably from inside a control tower humming with AI, digital twins and enough conveyor simulations to make your GPU blush.
Australia’s contract mining sector is undergoing a quiet revolution—one that could fundamentally reshape the relationship between contractors and mine owners.
When PLS chief executive Dale Henderson told the WA Mining Club’s November luncheon that it’s “easier to get things done in Brazil than in Western Australia,” the room went quiet for a moment.
If you think the most exciting innovations in critical-minerals exploration are happening in labs or boardrooms, you might want to take another look at the drill pad.
A new study has shown that bioleaching can strip more than 90% of sulphur and iron from coal waste, neutralising its acid-generating potential and creating a saleable by-product.
When global power plays, policy whiplash and economic shocks collide, opportunity hides in the chaos — and for Australia’s critical minerals sector, survival now depends on strategy as much as supply.
There’s a moment in every technological revolution when optimism meets reality - when the glossy promise of transformation hits the grit of practical deployment.
It takes a certain type of confidence to suggest the future of clean energy metals might lie four kilometres below the Pacific Ocean – confidence, and perhaps a streak of stubbornness.
Mining loves a neat correlation – tonnes per shift, dollars per ounce, emissions per unit, but as Peter Burton pointed out at AusIMM’s Critical Minerals 2025 in Perth, one thing that refuses to fit a tidy graph is safety performance.
It’s not every day that a government geoscience leader talks about AI assistants, rare earth mapping, and century-long prosperity in the same breath – but that’s exactly what Melissa Harris did in Perth.
