Regulations have created a technocratic framework for junior mining that cannot address increasingly complex non-technical factors, and that tends to discourage new investors from entering the sector. In the face of increasing autocracy and instability, the technocracy needs to be refocused on its core business, operating a design process that addresses the needs of all stakeholders, not just shareholders.

Although NI43-101 is silent on innovation, it is the public-facing apex of an entrenched ecosystem whose practices could be much more amenable to innovation. Regulation has the laudable goal of protecting a non-specialist retail investor from some of the risks of a highly uncertain business; but in doing so, it inadvertently freezes out risk’s alter ego, opportunity.

I believe that the small-scale gap is harming the mining industry by shielding it from innovators. The result is fragility. In this post I dig deeper into how flexibility has been a casualty of the pursuit of scale. It’s a systemic problem.

If you are an expert in mining or mineral process engineering, you may be tired of neophytes and academics arguing that there is value to be created in small-scale mining. You have a lifetime of spreadsheets telling you that economy of scale is always the right answer; that optimization is a well-established practice with no magic wormholes where the laws of physics are suspended.

And of course you are right.