The 2026 RIU Explorers Conference in Fremantle, WA, was perhaps the most impactful and positive in recent years. This was overwhelmingly due to the gold price sitting at over $5,000 USD an ounce. The conference highlighted the sheer number of exploration projects actively searching for and striking not only gold but also precious metals, critical minerals, and rare earths, which are driving plenty of investor analysis and activity. Gold producers are spending significant time with junior explorers to determine if they are sitting on Australia’s next big deposit.
What is causing the price of gold to rise so much? Geopolitical instability creates uncertainty, hence the gravitation toward commodities, which Australia is abundantly rich in. Explorers are well funded to initiate drilling campaigns to increase the news flow that the market desperately craves. Who will win the race to not only find Australia’s next Hemi, but also switch on Australia’s newest producing mill? Only time will tell.
Key Themes
After listening to presentations throughout the conference, a few key themes really stood out:
- Unsurprisingly, there is strong momentum in gold, silver, and copper. A healthy pipeline of projects, with juniors and emerging producers actively pushing towards the next stage of development.
- Critical minerals, rare earths, nickel, lithium, aluminium, tungsten, and tin are showing strong positive trends due to:
- Chinese and Indonesian production caps
- Data centre hardware and solar
- Electrification and AI
- Arms and ammunition production
- Tighter control over costs and cash, with market conditions putting a real focus on understanding project economics, from drill spend through to production planning and forecasting.
- Data and systems integration. Many conversations centred around bringing geological, operational and financial data together to support faster, better‑informed decisions.
- ESG and transparency – investors and stakeholders are expecting clear, auditable reporting across the full lifecycle of projects.
At Scope Systems, this really resonates with the work we are doing to help explorers and miners:
- Implementing integrated ERP and mine management solutions so teams can see the full picture, from exploration spend to site operations and corporate reporting.
- Providing strong cost control, budgeting and forecasting tools tailored to the realities of projects.
- Enabling reliable, compliant reporting to boards, investors and regulators through centralised, trusted data.
It was great to catch up with so many customers and partners over the three days, and to meet new explorers who are ready to formalise and scale their systems. I am looking forward to continuing the conversations and supporting the next wave of projects, and seeing what the year has to offer.
