UK Mining conference 2023

The UK Mining Conference 2023 was held over 1.5 days from 13-14 September, at the Princess Pavilion, Falmouth, Cornwall. It was very well organised by ABMEC, the only Trade Association representing the British mining supply chain, providing member services to help promote sales and business growth. The Cornwall connection was initiated by Jeremy Wrathall and his team at Cornish Lithium plc.

The conference was attended by over 280 delegates from the whole mining supply chain, including investors, brokers and producers. There were even two delegates from Tata Steel in India and one from Canada, who had come over to hear about the lithium developments in Cornwall. There is much activity in the UK mining industry and in particular Cornwall, and with the world’s insatiable demand for technology metals such as lithium, copper, tin, tungsten, cobalt as well as minerals to increase food production and provide housing and infrastructure for an ever-growing population, the industry is booming.

Due to other commitments I was only able to attend the first afternoon session, so this is by no means a comprehensive report on the conference. The presentations highlighted the opportunities to responsibly extract the abundance of metals and minerals in the UK, recap on the work undertaken so far and illustrate the potential investment opportunities that lie ahead.

Supplementing the 23 presentations, covering all aspects of mining, exploration and development in the UK, were site visits to Cornwall's tin and lithium developments and to Tungsten West's operation at Hemerdon, across the border in Devon.

It was good to see so many young people at the event, especially young women pursuing careers in mining and geology.  Some of the Camborne School of Mines (CSM) students are photographed below with me and Carol Richards, the CSM Association secretary.  

Young people are the lifeblood of sustainability in the mining industry and I aimed my invited talk on the evolution of mineral processing at these students, hoping that I could inspire them to enter this most crucial operation in the mining chain. Two of the CSM students, Codi Brooks and Sally Salter, followed my presentation and spoke enthusiastically about their short time in the mining industry where they have already travelled to some exciting parts of the world. Jamie Hinch, a PhD student at the University of Oxford talked about his research project on the social aspects of lithium mining in Cornwall. 

Codi, James and Sally

Finding the future workforce is a problem internationally and CSM Director Pat Foster discussed this and showed how education and skills must be developed. In 1989 undergraduate mining degrees in the UK were offered by the Universities of Nottingham, Leeds, Strathclyde, Newcastle, Cardiff, North Staffs Polytechnic, Camborne School of Mines and Royal School of Mines. By 2005 only Camborne School of Mines and the University of Leeds had mining degree courses and by 2010 there was only CSM. By 2020 there were none, the CSM degree course being 'paused' and this year will be the final year of mining degree undergraduates. 

Pat stressed that there is a real need to bring back a full time Mining Engineering Degree but in the meantime a degree apprenticeship course starts this year, combining studying part-time at CSM and the rest of the time with their employer. Fourteen students have so far enrolled, all working in operating mines, and CSM also runs attractive MSc courses in mining, geology and mineral processing. Pat concluded by saying that we all work for one of the world's most essential industries, which is crucial to the energy transition and green economy. But we struggle to recruit young people into our industry today. There is an urgent need to promote our industry and we all have a role in this.

Falmouth's Chain Locker is my "local" and I was a little disappointed that on a fine evening delegates were confined to the upper restaurant for the first night buffet rather than in our usual sundowner area outside by the inner harbour. The restaurant was crowded, hot and noisy so I did not remain too long, but long enough for me and my old friend Ian Townsend, who both began our long careers in Zambia, to be interviewed by Ian's son, Jeff Townsend, founder of the Critical Minerals Association. Jeff asked about our long lives in the mining industry and the opportunities that it has given us for travelling the world.

With Ian Townsend

The conference ended on the evening of 14th September with a gala dinner at Falmouth's National Maritime Museum and it was good to have fine wine from Cornwall in the pre-dinner session, the excellent sparkling wines from the Camel Valley vineyard.

CSM students and staff

The highlight of the evening was the presentation of awards by St Austell and Newquay’s Member of Parliament Steve Double, who is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mining and Quarrying, which is supported by the Mineral Products Association. The aim of the group is to help keep Members of the Commons and Lords up to date with issues affecting the industry which represents the biggest flow of materials in the economy. 

I was pleased to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award, which I accepted on behalf of MEI (posting of 20th September). The award for Exploration went to Richard Williams, the CEO of Cornish Metals, who is also co-founder and CEO of Winshear Gold Corp., an exploration company with gold projects in Peru, which previously discovered the 1 million ounce SMP gold project in Tanzania. The ESG Award went to Kate Harcourt, an independent ESG advisor for over 10 years, with an MSc in the technology before it was fashionable! in 2018 Kate was nominated as one of the top 100 Global Inspirational Women in Mining.

Steve Double with Richard, Kate and me

I look forward to next year's conference, which will be in Falmouth again, on the week commencing 10th June.

@barrywills