Leadership Roundtables

Explore how investors, policymakers and industry stakeholders can identify opportunities, de-risk investment and position Ukraine's mining sector for resilient, long-term recovery.

Discussion Points:

• Understand the investment frameworks and risk mitigation approaches that can support capital deployment into Ukraine's mining sector and future reconstruction priorities.
• Gain insight into opportunities to integrate Ukrainian mineral supply into European and transatlantic value chains supporting defence, energy and advanced manufacturing.
• Identify practical approaches to prioritising infrastructure, processing and technology investment that can strengthen Ukraine's mining sector and support sustainable economic recovery.

The agenda is under development but topics in line for discussion include: 
 
1. Geopolitics and Strategic Materials 

• Which critical minerals and processed materials matter most to defence, AI and energy OEMs over the next decade?
• Where are the most material gaps between current resource and processing capability and allied demand?
• How should the industry and allied governments prioritise investment to maximise strategic value?

2.  From Resource to Industrial Capability

• What is realistic to achieve across the mining–processing–manufacturing value chain, and over what timeframe?
• Where should different regions specialise, and where should they rely on allied partners for downstream processing or manufacturing?
• What infrastructure, skills and regulatory conditions are required to accelerate industrial capability at pace across Western-aligned value chains?

3.  Financing and De-risking Strategic Projects

• What are the key barriers preventing capital from flowing to strategically important critical minerals projects?
• How can government-backed Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) better coordinate to co-finance priority projects?
• What role should offtake arrangements, government-backed guarantees and blended finance play in de-risking project development, and how can London's capital markets accelerate this?

4. Building Allied Supply Chain Resilience

• This sits inside an active institutional shift. The new FORGE trade block, alongside a new US-EU Critical Minerals Partnership MoU on trade, standards and stockpiling.  
• What capabilities should allied nations prioritise to best support shared defence and energy requirements, and how can/should these be sequenced?
• How can trading houses, off-takers and commodity intermediaries accelerate market access for emerging producers? 

 
5.    Dual use for Critical Minerals 

Explore how industry, governments and capital providers can strengthen rare earth processing and magnet supply chains to support long-term strategic capability.

Discussion Points:

• Understand where the most significant gaps remain across rare earth separation, metallisation, magnet manufacturing and the wider downstream supply chain.
• Gain insight into the investment, technology and regulatory changes required to accelerate commercially viable processing and manufacturing capacity outside concentrated supply networks.
• Identify practical approaches to aligning government support, industry investment and regulatory reform to build more resilient rare earth supply chains for strategic applications.

Explore how technology, regulation and investment can align to establish practical pathways for responsible deep-sea mineral development and supply.

Discussion Points:

• Understand the operational, environmental and regulatory criteria required to build a credible and responsible deep-sea mineral value chain.
• Gain insight into emerging technologies, traceability systems and ESG frameworks that can support lower-impact extraction and strengthen market confidence.
• Identify practical approaches to aligning environmental safeguards, regulatory milestones and investment requirements to support responsible project development and financing.

Explore how stronger structural understanding can reduce uncertainty, improve decision-making and create a faster, more capital-efficient pathway from discovery to bankable development.

Discussion Points:

• Understand where structural data gaps create friction across exploration, resource conversion, investment decisions and project development, slowing progress and increasing capital requirements.
• Gain insight into how high-resolution structural confidence can strengthen subsurface models, improve stakeholder alignment and reduce reliance on repetitive infill drilling.
• Identify practical approaches to building structural understanding earlier, enabling faster resource conversion, stronger investment cases and more efficient progression towards production.

Facilitated by Fleetspace

Mine planning and design decisions made in the earliest stages of a project lock in cost, safety and productivity outcomes for decades to come — long before a single piece of equipment reaches site.  
 
This Roundtable is built for the people who own technical direction inside a mining company: Chief Operating Officers, Technical Directors, Heads of Mine Planning, Study Managers, General Managers of Operations, and VPs of Engineering. It also draws engineering and technical services firms delivering feasibility studies, mine design work and project execution — principals, technical directors and study leads from those consultancies. Beyond individual companies, it's relevant to equipment and automation providers whose technology is embedded in planning decisions, and to investors and financiers who need to assess whether a project's technical plan is genuinely bankable. In short: anyone with real influence over how a mine gets designed, not just how it gets financed. 
 
Attendees leave with more than networking — they get a working view of how peers are actually solving the planning trade-offs everyone faces: sequencing, automation adoption, safety-by-design, and the gap between feasibility-study assumptions and what happens once a mine is operating. The closed-door, roundtable format means franker discussion than a normal conference panel, with real project examples rather than marketing pitches. For technical leaders, it's a chance to benchmark their own approach against the industry's best thinking; for consultancies and vendors, it's direct access to the people making design decisions; for investors, it's a fast way to understand what separates a resilient mine plan from a fragile one.  

Explore how coordinated infrastructure, investment and policy can connect African mineral resources with processing capacity, regional markets and new opportunities for value creation.

Discussion Points:

• Understand how multi-modal infrastructure corridors can connect mining regions, processing hubs and ports to strengthen intra-African mineral value chains.
• Gain insight into the policy alignment, public-private partnerships and financing models required to de-risk cross-border infrastructure and industrial development.
• Identify practical approaches to linking resource development, transport and processing investment to retain greater mineral value within African economies.

As industrial policy evolves on both sides of the Atlantic, how can governments, miners, buyers, and investors work together to translate shared ambitions into commercially viable projects, stronger markets and long-term industrial and supply chain stability? Additionally, where are US, Canada, Australian and EU priorities converging, and how can that momentum be translated into investment, innovation, and industrial growth? 
 
Discussion Topics:

• Mapping the Transatlantic Opportunity - The US/EU MoU marks a shift in ambition. But where are priorities genuinely converging on minerals, manufacturing, and industrial competitiveness, and where do tensions remain? What does deeper public-private collaboration realistically look like from here?
• Turning Resource Potential into Investable Projects - What policy, financing, and market signals are moving investment decisions right now? How can governments reduce barriers without undermining investor confidence, and what's still missing?
• Demand Visibility and Value Chain Integration - Offtake uncertainty remains one of the biggest obstacles to project finance. How can miners, processors, manufacturers, and end-users create the demand signals that unlock long-term investment? What partnership structures are proving effective?
• Building Competitive Markets for Critical Minerals - How can greater market transparency, pricing mechanisms and trade cooperation support greater investment and market activities? What lessons can we share across domestic/international jurisdictions to strengthen market resilience and efficiency?

Explore how governments, industry, investors and downstream partners can align responsible sourcing with supply chain resilience and develop strategies that deliver both.

Discussion Points:

• Understand where responsible sourcing and supply chain resilience reinforce each other, and where potential trade-offs require clearer alignment and decision-making.
• Gain insight into how governments, mining companies, downstream businesses and investors can establish shared expectations across responsible and resilient supply chains.
• Identify practical approaches to balancing security, sustainability and commercial priorities when developing more responsible and resilient mineral supply chains.

A senior level workshop to consider fresh, radical and daring approaches to addressing mining's reputational challenge and opportunity. 
 
Premise: 
 
Perceptions about mining and metals in many parts of the world are 20 years behind the reality, bringing low trust, public suspicion and policy-maker reluctance to act. This affects companies' ability to plan and deliver the vital materials required by society for the future, threatening the energy transition as well as nations' commercial, economic, security and social ambitions. Our efforts to change this have only been partially successful - and there's been a lot of talk about the problem but not many new innovations. It's time for new approaches. What should those be? 
 
The event: 
 
30-40 participants with a mix of industry and non-industry leaders who are each encouraged to submit their one radical idea for changing industry perceptions ahead of the event. What has worked in other industries or sectors? What have we been too conservative to try in the past? What opportunities does technology give us today that didn't exist yesterday? 
 
Those ideas will be collated, and participants will discuss, workshop and then vote on them, choosing a small to be carried forward band brought to life. 
 
Expect a no holds barred, anything goes, approach from some of the industry's most important friends and family, freed to be daring and take risks. 
 
 
We will aim for a mix of industry and non-industry voices - including from mining companies, investors, governments, associations, civil society groups, academics - and at least 15% of the audience needs to be below the age of 25 to ensure that we get a perspective from those who are the industry's future talent and leaders. 

The roundtable will address the critical imperatives of constructing a robust, ethical, and secure battery supply chain amid escalating geopolitical risks and tightening regulatory frameworks. 

 
Central to the discussion is the implementation of the EU Battery Passport requirements, which mandate digital transparency for batteries entering the European market. Executives will examine the operational challenges of mapping complex upstream networks to report on carbon footprint, recycled content, and ethical sourcing. The panel will explore how sharing this standardised data across borders can foster market-wide accountability, transforming regulatory compliance from a cost centre into a competitive advantage for resilient organisations. 
 
Concurrently, the roundtable will pivot to urgent logistical vulnerabilities, specifically examining recent trade disruptions in the Straits of Hormuz. As a vital maritime chokepoint, instability in this region directly impacts the transit of critical minerals, chemical precursors, and components destined for global manufacturing hubs. Participants will analyse the ripple effects of these bottlenecks, including soaring freight insurance, prolonged transit times, and sudden material shortages, which underscore the fragility of just-in-time inventory models. 
 
To bridge these two realities, leaders will debate strategies for balancing transparency with operational security. The session will highlight how advanced traceability technologies, such as blockchain and decentralised digital ledgers, can provide real-time visibility during geopolitical crises, enabling companies to dynamically reroute shipments and verify alternative suppliers without sacrificing compliance