Beyond Waiting

Since I started writing this column, I have found myself returning more often than I expected to the same subject: waiting.

Waiting for projects to move, for investment decisions to be made, for permits to advance, and for some of the uncertainty surrounding our industry to clear.

There have always been good reasons to remain optimistic. Commodity prices, particularly copper and precious metals, have supported the fundamentals behind many projects. The need for the materials our industry produces has certainly not disappeared. And more recently, there are encouraging signs that some of the projects we have been discussing for years may finally begin to move.

I believe they will.

But this time, as I sat down to write, I realized I didn’t want to write another column about waiting.

Perhaps that says something about me. I am not particularly good at it.

Looking back at my career, I have always been attracted to the next problem that needs solving. Sometimes that has meant developing a market. Sometimes it has been building a team, finding a way to execute a project locally, entering a new area of the business, or simply sitting with a customer and trying to understand a problem we have not encountered before.

Once something becomes comfortable, I tend to start looking for the next challenge.

That curiosity is probably one of the reasons mining has managed to keep my attention for so long.

A Different Equation

From the outside, mining can appear to be a very traditional industry. We move enormous quantities of material using equipment that, at least conceptually, has existed for generations. A conveyor is still a conveyor. A thickener is still a thickener.

But the problems we are being asked to solve are changing significantly.

Today, producing more is only part of the equation. We need to recover more water. We need to move more material while consuming less energy. We need to make better use of existing infrastructure and extend the life of equipment already installed. And we need to reduce environmental footprints while producing more of the minerals that the modern world increasingly requires.

Those are difficult engineering problems. And difficult problems are interesting.

It is one of the reasons I have remained excited about technologies such as high-efficiency thickening and water recovery, or in-pit crushing and conveying systems that can reduce dependence on truck haulage and the energy required to move material. It is also why companies such as TAKRAF continue investing in research and development even during periods when new project investment is slow.

You cannot start innovating when the project arrives. You need to have done the work before it does.

But something else has happened to me over the last few years.

Perhaps partly because our own market has moved more slowly than I would have liked, I have found myself increasingly curious about what is happening outside mining.

I have spent more time listening to people working in energy, logistics, technology, and other industries. Not because I have lost interest in mining, but because looking outside your own industry can make you look differently at the one you already know.

That curiosity has also led to practical opportunities. We have found ourselves involved in conversations and projects beyond traditional mining, including in ports, petrochemical facilities, and other industrial environments where the same questions about material handling, efficiency, reliability, and resource use are being asked in different ways.

These opportunities are not a departure from what we know. They are an extension of it. The equipment and applications may differ, but the underlying challenge is often familiar: How can a complex operation move, process, or manage materials more safely, efficiently and sustainably?

Similar Challenges

What has surprised me is how similar many of the challenges are. 

Everyone seems to be asking some version of the same question: How do we do more with less?

Less energy. Less water. Less waste. Less capital. Less time.

At the same time, expectations continue to increase.

We want reliable and affordable energy, but with a lower environmental footprint. We want electrification, data centers, transportation infrastructure, and increasingly sophisticated technology, all of which require enormous quantities of materials. We want industrial growth, but we also expect industry to become cleaner and more efficient.

These are not necessarily contradictions. They are engineering challenges.

And increasingly, I find that this is the part that interests me most.

I like businesses that solve tangible problems. I like projects where, at the end, something works better than it did before. Perhaps a mine recovers more water. Perhaps a conveyor replaces dozens of trucks. Perhaps an operation consumes less power. Perhaps a port handles material more efficiently, a petrochemical facility improves the reliability of its systems, or an entirely different industry finds a better way of producing or delivering something people need.

The industry matters, of course. But I am beginning to think that the problem matters even more.

There is also something healthy about being a beginner again.

After spending many years in one industry, you accumulate experience, relationships and, inevitably, assumptions. Looking into another industry, or simply having conversations with people who approach similar problems differently, forces you to ask basic questions again.

Why is it done this way?

Why couldn’t it be done differently?

What are they doing that we could use?

And perhaps most importantly: what don’t I know?

Those questions are useful, even when they do not lead immediately to an answer.

A Slightly Different Outlook

None of this changes my optimism about mining. In fact, I remain convinced that the coming decades will require enormous investment in mining. Electrification, renewable energy, infrastructure, and improvements in living standards all depend on materials that ultimately have to come out of the ground.

I also want to see the projects we have been discussing for years finally become reality. I want to see the engineering turn into equipment, the equipment arrive at site and the ideas we have spent years developing actually operating.

But I have realized that I don’t want to spend the years between now and then simply waiting for that to happen.

There is too much changing around us.

So perhaps my outlook today is slightly different from the one I had when I started writing this column.

I am still optimistic about the next mining cycle. I am still convinced that technology will allow us to produce the resources society needs more efficiently and responsibly. And I am still very interested in being part of that process.

But I am also looking sideways a little more often.

At other industries. At other technologies. At ports, petrochemical facilities, and other industrial operations where familiar challenges appear in unfamiliar forms. At people solving different problems.

Not because every opportunity needs to become a new direction, and certainly not because the answer is always to promote what we already do. Sometimes the value is simply in listening, learning, and recognizing a useful connection between two fields.

Because I have learned something fairly simple about what keeps me motivated.

It isn’t waiting for the next project.

It is finding the next problem worth solving.