Modern Mining January 2018

EVENTS

Junior mining to feature strongly at Mining Indaba Although the upcoming Mining Indaba in Cape Town will take place at a time when the prospects for the African mining industry look mixed at best, the organ-

W hen the Mining Indaba was first held half back in the 1990s, its immediate – and huge – success was due to the fact that it brought to- gether junior miners and explorers active in Africa with members of the investment com- munity. Over the years, this emphasis on the junior miner sector slipped somewhat, with the Mining Indaba increasingly becoming a platform for the mining majors to present their standard corporate presentations and with the exhibition area increasingly seeing an influx of service providers and equipment suppliers to the mining industry. Now the organisers are making a conscious attempt to revive the original character of the show. Says Alex Grose, Mining Indaba MD: “We initiated a series of changes to the 2017 event to bring Mining Indaba back to its roots, and to meet the changing needs of the mining industry. For 2018, we’ll be further enhancing networking and deal-making platforms.” The Investment Battlefield was launched at the 2017 show and proved extremely popular. The format this year will be similar to last year, with 24 companies due to present their projects for five minutes each, with 10 minutes of live feedback from an expert panel of judges. The proceedings will be structured around com- modity focused categories, namely precious metals, bulk and base metals, battery miner- als and energy minerals, with three companies pitching in each category. The final winner and Mining Showcase, which will bring together around 45 emerging mining companies from across Africa, as well as the Investment Battlefield, which will see juniors pitching their projects over the three days of the event. isers are confident that it will cement its position as one of the biggest mining investment events in the world. A par- ticular highlight will be the new Junior

runner-up will be chosen on the main stage on the Wednesday (7 Feb) of the Mining Indaba. The ‘hot’ topic of battery metals and min- erals will not only feature in the Investment

The Investment Battlefield attracted a good audience at last year’s Mining Indaba.

Battlefield but will also be the subject of a panel dis- cussion entitled ‘Battery Metals: How can Africa position itself to take advantage of the EV revolution’. Moving beyond

the juniors, many o f the l eading mining companies will, of course, be presenting at the

event and, in most cases, will be represented by their CEOs or COOs. For example, and to take a few names at random, Bold Bataar of Rio Tinto, Mike Fraser of South32, Paul Rollinson of Kinross, Deshnee Naidoo of Vedanta Zinc, Niël Pretorius of DRDGOLD, Neal Froneman of Sibanye-Stillwater and Chris Griffith of Anglo American Platinum will all be speaking at the Mining Indaba. Also worth watching out for will be a copper versus gold debate – tackling the issue of which is the better investment case – between two of the mining industry’s most compelling speak- ers, Mark Bristow of Randgold Resources and Robert Friedland of Ivanhoe Mines. Bristow, of course, will be fighting gold’s corner while Friedland will be promoting copper. Randgold

Mark Bristow (left) and Robert Friedland will be the participants in a copper versus gold debate.

January 2018  MODERN MINING  25