Rethinking Discovery: Why Technology, Capability and Curiosity Matter at the Start of the Mining Value Chain
As the mining industry grapples with growing global demand for critical minerals, much of the conversation centres on downstream efficiency — faster approvals, smarter operations, and improved productivity once a project is underway. But what happens much earlier in the value chain often receives far less attention.
For the first panel of AusIMM’s 2026 Thought Leadership Series — Capability, Technology and Leadership — that upstream perspective will be front and centre. One of the panellists helping to set the scene is Jai Kinkela, who works at Fleet Space Technologies, a company focused squarely on the discovery and exploration end of the equation.
“The supply crunch is coming,” Jai explains. “And if we don’t start addressing it now, it will affect society’s ability to fuel its next technological evolution.”
The discovery problem hiding in plain sight
The energy transition is driving unprecedented demand for commodities such as copper, lithium and rare earths. Forecasts suggest demand for copper alone could increase by around 30 per cent by 2040 — yet the industry is already trending towards a significant supply deficit well before then.
One of the core reasons, Jai says, is a sharp decline in the rate of mineral discovery.
“On average, only one in a thousand exploration prospects actually becomes a viable mine,” he says. “And even when one does, it can take close to two decades to bring online.”
Those numbers raise some uncomfortable questions. If new deposits are getting deeper, more complex and harder to find, is the industry still relying on a playbook designed for a very different era?
At Fleet Space Technologies, the answer is no.
Evolving the exploration playbook
Fleet's approach applies seismic technology and real-time sensing within an integrated geoscience workflow — giving exploration teams a much clearer picture of the subsurface, earlier and with greater confidence.
“The previous generation of ore bodies was found with a particular set of tools and assumptions,” Jai says. “Those approaches don’t hold up against the challenges we’re facing today.”
The goal is not simply to find more targets, but to de-risk critical decisions earlier in the lifecycle — saving time, capital and effort over the long term. In an industry where time itself is rarely valued explicitly in investment decisions, that shift in thinking is significant.
“Time is often neglected in traditional value calculations,” Jai notes. “But if we can reduce the time it takes to understand whether a deposit is real and viable, the downstream benefits are enormous.”
Capability gaps — and how to bridge them
Technology alone, however, is not the full answer. Jai is candid about the capability gaps facing the industry, particularly as digital tools become more central to decision-making.
“We need to stop training geoscientists who fear code, and data scientists who fear rocks,” he says.
At Fleet, one response has been to intentionally blur those boundaries. Instead of hiring solely from within mining, the company actively brings in expertise from adjacent industries such as space and advanced technology.
Their product development teams include engineers with backgrounds at major technology companies, working alongside geoscientists in multidisciplinary groups. The structure — and the mindset — is deliberately borrowed from the tech sector.
That approach extends beyond hiring into culture. Jai describes an internal initiative where Fleet’s technical teams were given time and freedom to experiment with emerging tools like large language models — not with a defined output, but to foster curiosity and shared learning.
“It wasn’t about having an explicit end goal,” he says. “It was about giving people permission to explore new technology and see what ideas emerged.”
Leadership, curiosity and learning from elsewhere
This willingness to learn from other industries — and to do so without ego — is something Jai sees as a differentiator, not just for Fleet, but as a model the broader mining industry could adopt.
“We don’t have to repeat every mistake ourselves,” he says. “There’s so much innovation in adjacent industries that we can learn from and adapt.”
That mindset also underpins Fleet’s connection to space technology, which is more than metaphorical. From satellites supporting near-real-time data transfer to upcoming plans to deploy seismic sensing technology beyond Earth, space has shaped how Fleet thinks about speed, data and possibility.
Ultimately, Jai comes back to leadership.
“This is a company that prioritises innovation and genuinely believes no idea is too crazy to consider,” he says. “That culture expands what people believe is possible.”
Setting the scene for the panel
These themes — upstream focus, evolving capability, technology adoption and leadership that enables curiosity — will form a key part of the opening panel of the 2026 Thought Leadership Series.
As Jai’s perspective makes clear, the future of mining won’t be shaped only by what happens at the end of the value chain. It will depend just as much on how boldly the industry reimagines its starting point.
Watch the panel discussion - Capability, technology and leadership - from 4 June via our YouTube channel. Subscribe for a reminder and Series updates.
👉 Learn more about the Capability, Technology and Leadership panel.
👉 Learn more about Jai Kinkela
Thought Leadership Series Signature Partner