Taking place on 21–23 October, IMARC 2025 reflected an industry increasingly leveraging smarter processes, harnessing emerging technology and forming strategic partnerships.
If there was a single word buzzing through IMARC 2025, it wasn’t AI, innovation or sustainability – although all made their appearances. It was “adaptability”. From the exhibition floor to the presentation stages, the atmosphere and conversations indicated a mining sector at a pivotal moment, ready to shift from capable but traditionally slow-moving operations to an industry able to harness technology, strategic partnerships and smarter processes with agility.
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This is the key insight distilled from conversations with exhibitors, speakers and delegates throughout the show, but it can be traced back to Mining Technology’s interview with the event director, Sherene Asnasyous, who highlighted IMARC 2025’s key themes: strengthening supply chains, optimising costs and driving productivity.
“This year, with geopolitical issues and trade tensions, particularly between the US and other countries, there is a big focus on strengthening supply chains. It is about how nations are supporting critical mineral and natural resource supply chains and their trade partners. IMARC is tackling that at a macro level, but operationally, companies still need to protect their business,” she explained.
Strengthening supply chains
Recent global geopolitical shifts and supply chain reconfigurations were recurring topics throughout the event, emphasising the need to balance sovereignty with strategic, sustainable global partnerships.
“Regionalisation of supply and demand is becoming apparent […] especially for critical and strategic minerals […] there is a notion that geopolitically free and open trade is no longer a given,” said Rosey Kaur, Bain & Company’s practice director for Melbourne.
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By GlobalData“We are leaning more towards, rather than a free and open trade environment, possibly a geographically aligned enough environment. Not for every commodity – if you think about iron ore and copper, they are pretty global still – but you start to look at aluminium, for example, and we are seeing a structural shift there, and then obviously we start to bring critical minerals into that play and it becomes even more difficult.”
Jodie Currie, director of the Bowen Basin Mining Club, emphasised the need for resilience and enablement. “We have learned a lot from Covid […] We need to bring our supply chains back in-house,” she noted. “We need to stop relying on overseas wherever we can […] we have become better for it. I am a huge champion of the Australian Mining Equipment, Technology and Services sector. We are amazing. Some of the best tech. Some of the best minds. We just need to harness them.”
The sentiment was that companies must proactively manage supply chains to withstand potential shocks but that there is also an opportunity to optimise local capability and innovation.
Optimising costs
Cost efficiency was another major focus, particularly as mining operations navigate fluctuating commodity prices and new investment requirements. Olga Verezub, head of strategic partnerships and business development at Mining One, pointed to the changing dynamics.
“I think the biggest change I have seen in the past 12 months is that we are now seeing quite strong government support, both Australian Government and other western governments, for critical mineral development in countries like Australia. That means companies will probably do more deals with governments as well as private equity – a different mix to what we have seen before.”
According to Verezub, strategic partnerships are central to cost optimisation: “You can leverage and complement what you already have by using skills of your strategic partner […] it encourages innovation together and makes funding easier. Longevity is the key.”
Driving productivity
The discussion around productivity often circled back to responsible technology adoption.
“We quite often refer to AI, or any technology solution, as a tool in the middle of a mine site and say, ‘here is a new, cool piece of tech, see what you can do with it’, as opposed to looking at the problem that actually needs to be solved,” said Michelle Carey, chief, digital earth knowledge at IMDEX. If we don’t do that […] we create other problems upstream or downstream because of what we have done […] and the company involved is led to think ‘that is a nice thing that I have put in here but it is not actually solving anything – I am not seeing any benefit from it at all’.”
Carey also highlighted funding gaps as a barrier to productivity, particularly in scaling early-stage technology. “There are lots of tech start-ups that are getting a lot of funding. Venture capital funding has massively lifted. If all that did was create lots of start-ups, that won’t actually change the metabolic rate of the whole industry,” she said.
“If you are going to take a piece of technology and work with a customer to embed it into their organisation, that can be – particularly in mining – a slowish burn, and the funding mechanisms to do that are not as well developed as the funding mechanisms for the front end.”
Queensland’s critical minerals push
Queensland, it seems, is in a sweet spot to capitalise on mining’s evolution. Gerard Coggan, coordinator-general for the Queensland Government, laid it out plainly: the state’s mining sector has a unique combination of resources, skills and government support.
“Two of the biggest advantages Queensland has is, firstly, an enormously skilled mining sector and capability to deliver in the mining space. The other is the resources in the ground,” he said.
In Queensland’s North-West Minerals Province alone, estimated resources are around $500bn (A$765.16bn). However, raw material is only half the story; the ability to turn resource potential into tangible economic development is where Coggan sees Queensland as having an advantage.
Queensland is clearly positioning itself as a serious global contender in critical minerals, and IMARC reinforced that momentum. Speaking at the event, Coggan said the state had the right technical depth, regulatory architecture and capability to capitalise fast.
For him, Queensland’s unique approvals model is also a substantial competitive advantage. “The Office of the Coordinator-General provides a coordinated, consolidated approach that really helps proponents bring projects to market faster […] we are able to provide them a single point of contact to government and help them understand the regulatory processes. We also have a wide range of powers that allow us to facilitate these projects and streamline those approval processes.”
Australian company Fleet Space has also placed a focus on critical minerals, pioneering agile geoscience technologies on Earth, the Moon and beyond, aiming to accelerate discovery and support growing demand. Its work includes everything from mapping ancient lava tubes and rapid lunar subsurface sensing to preparing for near-Earth asteroid survey missions.
Register Now for IMARC 2026
IMARC 2025 closed with a sense of purpose and optimism, showing that mining is ready to meet the challenges ahead – equipped with technology, smarter partnerships and a renewed energy to transform the way it operates.
IMARC will return to ICC Sydney in 2026, on 27–29 October. Registrations are open now.
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