Editor's letter

Welcome to the latest issue of MINE Australia.

If you ask a politician or an investor about the areas where they expect the most growth, you will likely hear back “energy” and “life sciences”. What happens when the two collide? We look at the microbes that would leach usable minerals from waste. Two projects are trialling new drone technology in Australian mines. As the quantity of data gathered in drone surveys rapidly grows, what other technologies are needed to handle them?

As climate change upsets expected weather patterns, projects are opened up to new environmental risks. Canada recently suffered a heavy wildfire season, just as Australia did in the summer of 2019-2020. We consider how Australian projects must respond to the worsening the risk of fires. And while burning fossil fuels remains a certainty for years to come, Australia’s exports have slowed in 2023. The fate of fossil fuels are interlinked, so we examine how Australia’s coal and gas exports have declined.

Find all this in your edition of MINE Australia. 

Matt Farmer, editor