By Andy Reynolds

This might be hard to believe, but in ‘advanced’ economies we have created a simplified existence. With enforceable contracts, property rights, free market economics, limited liability corporations, insurance and credit, we have replaced ecosystem complexity with simple economic e...

By Andy Reynolds

In May of this year, the Marathon copper-palladium project received its final construction permit. I was floored to learn that this important critical mineral deposit is hosted in rocks that date from the Archean Eon, which means that it took the Ontario Government more than 2....

By Andy Reynolds

In the previous article, I offered some indirect causal linkages between investor protection regulations and the well-known systemic problem of incorporating new technologies into mines and their process plants. Now I turn my attention to a much bigger issue: business model inno...

By Andy Reynolds

Does investor-protection regulation such as Canada’s National Instrument 43-101 (or by equivalence JORC, or SAMREC) create obstacles to innovation in mining? This is a perennial debate that rarely gets the in-depth treatment it deserves.

Let me first accept the (trite) argumen...

By Andy Reynolds

In my last blog post I lamented the obstacles to innovation in mining arising from the lack of small-scale mines. TLDR: efficiency trumps flexibility, creating large-scale operations that must be protected from experimentation. I believe that the small-scale gap is harming the i...