Industry growth centre METS Ignited has released a report into these industry knowledge priorities as a stepping stone on the way to developing its Sector Competitiveness Plan.

The other five IKPs are:

• Operating in a global market place;
• Business development, optimisation and growth;
• Excellence in finding, mining and extracting;
• Reducing mining’s footprint; and
• Ubiquitous sensing, digitisation and data analytics.

The IKPs are a result of consultation with the METS and mining sectors as well as through CSIRO, Austmine input and a report from mining focused management consultancy VCI that was commissioned by METS Ignited.

METS Ignited CEO Ric Gros said the six ICPs had been further shaped by global megatrends impacting the mining ecosystem as well as emerging challenges and technology trends.

“The IKPs fall into two key categories: management skills and capabilities needed to make the sector more competitive; and the research and development required to ensure the sector remains relevant,” he said.

“The knowledge priorities address the opportunities for step-change improvements in global mining challenges, creating a critical mass through identifying and development clusters formed around either areas of specific expertise or natural geographic groupings of complementary skills and increasing commercialisation of innovation.”