Insights from Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum 2026

Mining’s next constraint: What sits around the resource

Earlier this year, our reflections from the Noosa Mining Investor Conference pointed to the return of a more disciplined optimism: capital was available, but increasingly selective, with investors looking for quality projects, strong management teams and credible pathways to development.

Diggers & Dealers in Kalgoorlie provided an opportunity to look a little further beneath that proposition.

Across conversations with clients during the week, the discussion repeatedly came back to what it actually takes to turn a compelling resource into a sustainable operation, particularly across Australia’s vast and often remote mining regions.

Two issues stood out: the physical infrastructure required to enable development, and the increasingly tangible role of social licence in determining whether that development can be sustained.

Together, they point to a broader theme:

The resources sector is not short of opportunity. Increasingly, the question is whether the physical and social infrastructure surrounding those opportunities can convert them into durable value.

The resource sector needs physical infrastructure to support it

Kalgoorlie is a reminder of the sheer scale of Australia’s mining landscape and the distances across which dependable energy, water, transport, people and equipment need to be provided.

Energy security for the mining and resources sector featured strongly in several conversations. Companies are considering efficiency, renewables, storage, modular systems and backup options as they seek to balance reliability, cost and decarbonisation.

These asset-level responses are important, but they raise a broader question:

Are we planning the infrastructure required to support Australia’s mineral resources with the same long-term lens that we apply to the resources themselves?

Future development will depend not only on the quality of individual projects, but on the systems around them. Can we better understand emerging mineral development at a regional scale? Where could shared infrastructure unlock development or improve resilience, and where will modular solutions remain the better answer?

Importantly, that planning needs to extend beyond getting a project into production. Mine lives change, assets expand and eventually move towards closure and rehabilitation. Infrastructure decisions made today can therefore shape regional development for decades.

Larger operators may have the scale to invest in dedicated accommodation, infrastructure and regional initiatives. For mid-cap miners, juniors and emerging developments, the challenge is different: individually, they may not have the scale to solve regional infrastructure constraints, even where several projects collectively create sufficient demand.

That raises an interesting opportunity for greater regional coordination: identifying where geographic clustering of projects could support shared infrastructure, services and longer-term regional development.

Due diligence makes social licence a tangible aspect of project development

A second recurring theme at the forum was social licence, which is becoming a material risk for projects moving through development, investment and due diligence. 

Once considered a ‘soft’ or intangible nicety, investors, financiers and transaction parties increasingly ask for evidence of social licence as part of their due diligence.

This is causing concern as there can be a significant difference between believing stakeholder relationships are being well managed and being able to demonstrate that they are.

However, there is good reason for social licence to be part of that due diligence process. Stakeholder issues can affect:

• Project approvals
• Development timelines
• Operational continuity
• Investor confidence
• Transaction and financing outcomes.

But the challenge extends beyond engagement processes themselves. The real challenge is managing the broader expectations that accompany major resource developments.

Mining developments often arrive with expectations around employment, procurement, housing, infrastructure and broader regional prosperity. Those expectations need to be managed carefully, particularly where the scale of regional socio-economic challenges extends well beyond what any individual project can reasonably address.

A commitment to jobs requires people. People require housing, services, energy and social infrastructure. Where multiple projects are developing within the same region, those pressures (and opportunities) become cumulative.

This brings the physical and social questions together.

How do we ensure that the economic promise associated with resource development is matched by realistic expectations and the regional capacity required to support it?

Social licence may be difficult to quantify, but increasingly it is difficult to separate from project feasibility and long-term regional development.

From resource quality to development credibility

Geology, project economics and management capability remain fundamental. But perhaps the more interesting question emerging from Diggers & Dealers is broader:

What does it now take to demonstrate that a resource can be developed, and developed well?

Energy availability is a development issue. Water and transport are development issues. Stakeholder acceptance, community expectations and access to the people and services required to sustain regional operations are development issues too.

If Noosa highlighted a market increasingly willing to back quality projects with credible development pathways, Diggers raised the next question: 

What makes that pathway credible?

The next phase of Australia’s resources story may reward companies that can demonstrate not only the quality of what sits beneath the ground, but the foresight to develop everything required around it.

How RSM can help
We welcome the opportunity to continue the conversation and explore how we can support your goals. Contact the RSM Mining team for a confidential discussion.