Waiting for the Turn: Reflections From the Mining Convention

I decided to hold off on writing this month’s column until after the Mining Convention in Acapulco. In our everyday work, we convince ourselves that we already understand the landscape both globally and here in Mexico. We spend so much time discussing projects, forecasts, equipment, regulations, risks, and strategies that we start to feel like we have a complete view of the industry.

Conventions have a way of shaking us out of that comfort zone. They remind us that even people who live and breathe mining every day can become trapped in their own assumptions. We see the world through the lens of our inbox, our clients, our internal pressures, and our expectations. And sometimes, reality has other plans.

So we headed to Acapulco a bit anxious (I think everyone had reasons to be!) but genuinely excited to reconnect with colleagues, clients, and friends. And as always, the trip delivered more perspective than we anticipated.

One of the things I enjoy most about conventions is seeing familiar faces: the operators who continue pushing projects even when budgets freeze, the EPCs juggling three versions of the same schedule, the OEMs improvising around supply-chain delays, and the consultants who somehow know everything before anyone else does.

Despite the slow pace of formal project approvals, there was an underlying theme this year: people want to move forward. Engineers are still designing. Procurement teams are still negotiating. Investors, while cautious, still want to believe. And everyone is waiting for Mexico’s regulatory bottleneck to finally move along.

We heard a consistent message: “Permits are advancing more than before.”

Not fast. Not perfectly. But advancing. And given the context of the last few years, even incremental progress feels like a step in the right direction.

In the meantime, we continue doing what we can control: improving the efficiency of our equipment, training our teams, preparing our proposals, and positioning ourselves for the moment when projects finally break loose. Mining is a long-distance race, and part of that race is learning to stay ready even when the track ahead seems blocked.

Another takeaway, and one that grows stronger every year, is how interwoven our regional ecosystem has become. We talk about “Mexican mining,” “Canadian investment,” or “US engineering,” but the truth is that these categories overlap constantly.

Many projects in Mexico only exist because Canadian capital first believed in them. Many projects in the United States are executed with Mexican talent: engineers, designers, fabricators, and field specialists. OEMs like us often coordinate across two or three countries just to deliver one piece of critical equipment. 

For me, this reinforces something I’ve felt repeatedly over the years: Our industry survives and thrives because it adapts across borders, across markets, and across cycles.

It’s the same adaptability that has allowed our company with more than 300 years of history to continue evolving.

Every year brings a new challenge: new regulations, new technologies, new clients, new political realities. And yet the mission remains the same: support the mines that keep the world running.

You could see it in the conversations, the quiet hope that “next year is the year things finally open up,” teams preparing themselves for when approvals land. You could hear it in the tone of old colleagues, tired, maybe, but far from defeated.

Personally, it left me with a sense of motivation I hadn’t realized I needed. It’s easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind of negotiations, internal reviews, engineering deadlines, and the occasional crisis. It’s easy to feel the weight of uncertain timelines or the frustration of incomplete information.

But the convention reminded me that we’re not doing this alone. There is a whole community of OEMs, miners, EPCs, operators, engineers, and manufacturers pushing forward with the same intention: to build the next generation of mining in Mexico and North America.

And that collective momentum, even if slow, is incredibly powerful.

As I left Acapulco, I found myself hoping that my next column would be very different. Not because the challenges would disappear, but because we would finally be overwhelmed for the right reasons: too many projects moving at once, too many deadlines, too many teams mobilizing, too many deliveries to schedule.

We’re ready for that moment. Most of the industry is ready for that moment.

Until then, we will stay patient, we will stay focused, and we will stay prepared because mining has taught us time and time again: the cycles always turn, even if they take a little longer than we’d like.