If 2024 in the mining and metals industry was summed up in one word, that word would have been ‘uncertainty’. It follows naturally then that 2025 is shaping up to be all about ‘resilience’. And nowhere is this proving more important than in supply chains.
As global geopolitical volatility increases and demand for minerals and metals – driven by the energy transition and a fast-growing global population – heats up, the ability of supply chains to adapt and thrive through change is being put to the test.
Accelerating domestic production and export readiness has become a key objective for governments for whom critical metals availability is a future security concern.
Against this backdrop, mining and metals organisations find themselves challenged to balance complex priorities, including production pressures and rising costs with stakeholder calls for heightened transparency and environmental and social excellence.
Canada’s Global Innovation Cluster for digital technologies – DIGITAL, for short – is a not-for-profit organisation that accelerates the development, commercialisation and adoption of digital technologies in industries that are key to Canada’s economy.
The team is about to launch a new programme dedicated in part to digitalisation in mining and metals, and Nadia Shaikh-Naeem, Vice President of Programmes, joined me to discuss why.
“The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of supply chain resilience; that was a big wake up call for the world,” she said. “Companies depend upon their supply chains for everything, from access to raw materials to adding value to products and services.
“The political upheaval of the past 4-5 years, combined with the impacts of climate change, mean that many countries, including Canada, are reexamining the flow of value that their natural resources generate, and many are looking to realise that domestically from extraction to processing and marketing.”
In this sense, Canada is in a strong position. As of 2023, the market capitalisation of Canadian mining and exploration companies was C$336.7 billion. In 2022, domestic mineral exports totalled C$153.2 billion, accounting for 26% of Canada’s total merchandise exports.
“Canada already has a leadership position in terms of access to resources,” said Shaikh-Naeem. “But we need a greater focus on securing supply chains, building companies’ competitiveness and resilience, and working with communities to make sure that extraction and processing happen responsibly and sustainably.
“Beyond that, we also need to focus on the value addition or productisation of minerals, so that Canada isn’t so dependent upon the political whims of the world.”
Mine sites as living entities
The opportunity for digital technologies to enhance resilience and efficiency at every step of mineral and metal supply chains, as well as holistically, is vast.
DIGITAL works across multiple sectors, including healthcare, natural resources, agriculture, housing, workforce development and more. Through exposure to these industries, Shaikh-Naeem and her team have seen what’s possible, and want to continue extending that level of transformation into an even more dedicated focus on mining and metals.
“Digital technologies have the potential to improve almost every area of the mining value chain, but when it comes to tying those applications together and ensuring a seamless flow of data, there’s a lot of value being left on the table,” she told me.
“Part of the challenge is that, when mining companies look to implement digital solutions, they tend to do so in siloes – for example, in extraction or processing or transport – but that full value chain view is often missing.”
She added that data standardisation is also an issue. In sectors like healthcare and financial services, for example, data standards exist to support the roll out of technologies like automation and AI, but the mining industry has not achieved that yet.
The integration of legacy systems is another. Mining operations are relatively long lived, with economic extraction spanning anywhere from 15-100+ years.
Despite their tendency to grow and evolve during their lifetime, these assets are usually seen and treated as static entities, rather than living, breathing ecosystems that are sustained by a continuous flow of data, skills and systems investments.
“There are a lot of reasons why the mining sector hasn’t seen the full value of digitalisation and interconnectedness yet,” said Shaikh-Naeem. “But companies are increasingly realising the importance of systems thinking and the value that collaborative innovation can provide in digital innovation and transformation.
“The Mining Microbiome Analytics Platform (M-MAP), which is soon set to rebrand as nPhyla, is a good example of that. The early project DIGITAL supported, which birthed M-MAP as the commercial company it is today, saw competitors and companies from across the mining value chain come together to explore the value of microbes in different mining applications.
“The major mining companies involved have seen huge value from the project, but so have the smaller tech companies, like Allonnia, which can use the platform to build a suite of microbe products and services.”
Holding space for open collaboration
The beauty of having an organisation, like DIGITAL, facilitate an innovation project or programme is that it provides a ‘safe’ non-competitive space for companies to come together, share their challenges and co-create potential solutions.
It’s rare, though not impossible, for these spaces to come about organically. When they do coalesce naturally, these projects have tended to focus on sustainability challenges, but the next step will require miners to move even further out of their comfort zones and address efficiency and productivity within their value chains.
“Data is fundamental to solving industry-level challenges,” Shaikh-Naeem said. “When we build our project consortiums, they always include customers. And the number one place where discussions start is with data. Miners are very protective of their data; they want to know how they can access it, whether the data is safe and what vendors are doing with it.
“I get it. But today, there are structures and architectures, like edge computing, that allow for collaborative projects to take advantage of sensitive data while also protecting companies’ privacy and reputations.”
Having clear data management and cybersecurity structures in place, as well as arrangements surrounding intellectual property (IP), from the get-go can help give mining companies the confidence to participate in collaborative innovation projects on shared challenges.
These principles allow the ecosystems that DIGITAL facilitates to test new solutions and ideas, then bring in other players and technologies to keep the group expanding and evolving beyond the initial project.
“We want to foster services and products that will go into the market and continue to grow and have an impact over time,” said Shaikh-Naeem. “The people and companies involved will also continue to work together and build networks for the future.”
The need to nurture
The maternalistic, flowing vision of digitalisation that Shaikh-Naeem describes is quite a departure from the linear, structured and paternalistic norm that currently exists around emerging technologies in the mining and metals industry. It’s refreshing and could be exactly what’s missing from today’s transformation efforts…
“Developing and adopting transformative technologies is not an easy job,” she told me. “Companies must be ready and able to evolve, and they need to develop a relationship with these technologies; to nurture them and feed them with data and skilled talent.
“Context is everything. The technology needs to move with the space over time, and the space will also move with the technology. That symbiotic relationship is critical to success. If we assume that technologies and sites will always be stagnant, we’re setting ourselves up to fail.
“I see mine sites as living, breathing entities. In my mind, these are places that need to be taken care of. If we’re taking value out of the land, then we need to give something back in order to respect it, and that can be done through the use of technologies, digital or otherwise.”
There’s much that mining and metals organisations could learn from Indigenous and First Nation cultures in this respect. Shaikh-Naeem is confident that empowering communities and traditional landowners to participate more fully could help change perceptions of mining from a destructive force to a process that is part of a landscape and can help it to heal and repair.
Data: the lifeblood of resilient supply chains
Data and integrated technologies can provide supply chains and operations with the power to become living, adaptive entities that fit within the landscapes in which they operate, rather than the separate, static supply chains that have existed traditionally.
“That shift is what’s going to instill resilience,” Shaikh-Naeem said. “Because if companies and operations have the power to change and grow, then the supply chain has the power to overcome whatever challenges might lie ahead, whether that’s a geopolitical event, a new tariff or the physical effects of climate change.”
It’s true that resilience isn’t about creating a Fort Knox; it comes from the ability to navigate change and react in a way that makes sense for the context in which companies and operations find themselves.
“When we think of mining supply chains, we often see them as devoid of context and personality,” said Shaikh-Naeem. “But without context, a supply chain will not work. Change is happening at an incredible pace today and if our supply chains cannot adapt to it, then they will crumble.
“Digital technologies, like quantum and AI, allow organisations to predict and plan better so that they can pivot or adjust their direction in response to change. They also allow companies to test different process inputs against outputs, and see the ripple effect of changes to help make more informed decisions.”
Driving change from the bottom up
The products of mining form the basis of supply chains for hundreds, if not thousands of other industries, from transport and civil infrastructure to telecommunications and even agriculture (fertilisers). For digital transformation to be a success, it must start at the very beginning.
Shaikh-Naeem has high hopes that DIGITAL’s upcoming programme (launched on March 25) and the technologies it spawns will help to increase the competitiveness and resiliency of Canadian mining companies by accelerating their speed to market, reducing costs and lowering their environmental impacts.
“Historically our calls for proposals have focused on broad areas, like healthcare and natural resources,” she said. “But we’re now in our sixth year as an organisation, and we’ve got a strong portfolio of mining and metals projects.
“The opportunities that we see within the sector were the inspiration for putting a dedicated call together. There’s the potential for integrated, digital technologies to have a powerful effect on the Canadian economy through strengthening its supply chains.”
She added: “Our funding goes specifically to Canadian organisations that have substantial operations in Canada, and towards IP that’s made in Canada and stays within Canada. However, we want our consortiums to be global in nature to pull in diverse thinking, commercial opportunities, enable the exchange of ideas and to hold each other to high standards and ambitions.”
For the upcoming programme, DIGITAL is looking for technology vendors with solutions at technology readiness level (TRL) 6-7, with the intention of advancing them to TRL 9 during the project, as well as undertaking early deployments and laying the foundations for commercial scaling.
Applications will be considered based on a continuous intake: first completed submission, first evaluated.
“We use a co-investment model and deploy funding on a cost-incurred basis,” Shaikh-Naeem explained. “This helps to spur industry investment and de-risk development and adoption within traditionally conservative industries.
“For every C$100 a company spends, we will give them 35% back as long as they meet their milestones. Applicants need to have the financial resilience to manage their level of investment. They also need to have the right talent and leadership.
“Successful projects are those where the partners in a consortium are strategically aligned – versus proposals that are assembled to just tick the boxes of a call without a clear commitment for collaboration.
“Compelling proposals demonstrate a realistic approach to working together, capturing commercial opportunities and scaling effectively. These are key factors we consider when evaluating submissions.”
A very bright future
“Where do you think we could be in 10 years if more investors channel their efforts into the digital transformation of mining and metals supply chains?” I asked.
“I think we could be in a place where we feel that the mining sector is doing right by society, and society in turn more fully supports the sector,” replied Shaikh-Naeem. “To work in tandem and for mining to contribute sustainably to society, we need transparency, and digital technologies have the potential to demonstrate that.”
She continued: “For Canada, I would like us to be in a place where we feel economically emboldened because our supply chains are strong and resilient; to feel that we can withstand change and win on the global stage.
“I also hope that Canadian companies continue to be leaders in sustainable mining, and that we continue to engage with communities in a way that’s meaningful.
“That’s a lot for 10 years, and we’re going to be very busy trying to make that vision happen. But we see so much potential in this sector. There is so much at stake for us, economically and socially, that we really feel compelled to focus on this industry.”
This article is sponsored by DIGITAL. Head to its website to find out more about the new programme, and to learn about becoming a consortium member, contact [email protected]