IntelliSense CEO Sam Bose was excited by the energy levels at this year’s Saudi Arabia mining and metals show in Riyadh, where local government and industry officials continue to talk up the role of technology in new and brownfield developments.
A key message at the event, which apparently drew more than four times as many people as last year, was that the kingdom aims to build competitive, diversified supply chains, not just mines, with efficiencies defined as much by resource knowledge and governance as by grades and mining methods.
Bottom line, though: the Arab country’s rulers want to boost mining’s contribution to its oil-dominated GDP fourfold to about US$75 billion a year by 2030.
“There is an amazing amount of energy in the Middle East now,” says Bose, who founded AI-backed software company IntelliSense in 2013. The company was judged as best Mining Tech Scale-up in InvestMETS.com’s inaugural Global Mining Technology Awards.