Edgar Basto, Chief Enterprise Performance Officer at BHP, is targeting the next wave of performance gains by combining the company’s existing operational expertise with new technology deployments and a group-wide safety programme, outlined at IMARC 2026 in Sydney. The enterprise-level approach centralises performance improvement across BHP’s portfolio rather than by individual asset, signalling more standardised operating systems, data architectures and decision-support tools across iron ore, copper and coal. For engineers and managers, this points to tighter integration of technology, process discipline and safety metrics in future project and operations planning.

Perpetua Resources has secured a 36‑month, US$40 million cost‑share award from the US Army’s Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium to evaluate tungsten concentrate production at the Stibnite gold‑antimony project in Idaho, with Perpetua matching the funding. The programme covers surface drilling to define a tungsten resource, metallurgical test work on a 550 kg sample grading 9.2% antimony and 4.2% tungsten, and design and permitting of an exploration decline beneath the Hangar Flats pit. Drilling to date has returned up to 9.8 m at 4.6% tungsten and 8.3% antimony, indicating potential high‑grade feed beneath existing gold–antimony resources.

FireFly Metals has intersected a new volcanogenic massive sulphide copper-gold system at Mount Joy, just 2.6 km from its idle Nugget Pond mill and 35 km east of the Ming mine, with hole FFR26-071 cutting 22.5 m at 1.87% Cu and 0.64 g/t Au from 109 m, including 9 m at 2.95% Cu and 0.95 g/t Au. Follow-up drilling guided by downhole EM has hit ~40 m of semi-massive sulphides in FFR26-076 (240–280 m, assays pending), and a winter access road from Nugget Pond is planned to support further work. The discovery sits within the broader Green Bay plan, which currently envisages a 1.8 Mt/y plant over >32 years on 60.2 Mt at 1.9% Cu and 0.5 g/t Au, with a feasibility study and potential FID targeted for 2027.