SGS’s Lakefield Metallurgical Centre of Excellence will mark its 85th anniversary in 2026, as the Canadian mining sector faces what the company calls a critical inflection point. The Lakefield facility, long used for complex metallurgical testwork on gold, base metals and critical minerals, is being profiled alongside the PDAC 2026 conference in Toronto. SGS experts are expected to focus on flowsheet development, pilot-scale processing and ore characterisation services that de-risk new projects and brownfield expansions in Canada and abroad.

GRX26’s inaugural Global Resources Innovation Expo programme will run over three days with eight plenary keynotes and more than 30 speakers focused on “where innovation meets implementation” in mining and resources. Headliners include former Australian foreign minister The Hon Julie Bishop on new rules of resource diplomacy and Jason Crusan, CEO of AROSE and former NASA director, on cross-sector lessons from space systems engineering. The industry-led agenda signals strong emphasis on deployable technologies, automation and decarbonisation pathways rather than purely conceptual R&D.

Codelco and Rio Tinto have signed a Memorandum of Understanding at the BMO Global Metals, Mining & Critical Minerals Conference to create a strategic framework for joint development of major mining investment projects in Chile. The collaboration is aimed at improving project development and execution performance, drawing on both companies’ experience with large-scale copper operations and complex brownfield expansions. For engineers, the move signals potential alignment on project delivery models, risk-sharing structures and technical standards across future Chilean underground and open-pit developments.