The organisers of the MassMin 2020 Virtual Conference from December 9-11 recently announced the nine confirmed keynote speakers who will be giving the main presentations – all of them are specialists in their respective areas both in the Chilean and international spheres. They represent the world’s top mining companies and mine operators namely Codelco, Newcrest, Freeport-McMoRan, BHP and Rio Tinto as well as some of the industry’s key technology suppliers and consultants including Orica, Enaex and SRK. This year MassMin has been organised by the Department of Mining Engineering of the University of Chile, the Advanced Mining Technology Center (AMTC) and the Institute of Mining Engineers of Chile.

The list is made up of Octavio Araneda, CEO of Codelco Chile, who will talk about the use of smart mining in the state copper company; Germán Flores, General Manager Mining at Newcrest Mining, with a presentation on the digital transformation of caving mining; Tim Casten, Vice President of Underground Strategic Planning at Freeport-McMoRan, who will discuss that company’s transition to underground production in Indonesia; Craig Stegman, head of the Rio Tinto Underground Mining Centre of Excellence, who will speak about risk management in underground mining; Jaroslav Jakubec, SRK Consultant, is giving a presentation on diamond mining; Carlos Ávila, BHP’s VP of Planning and Technical Min Am, whose topic will be the challenges and opportunities of sustainable mining; Angus Melbourne, Orica’s Chief Commercial and Technology Officer, with a presentation on the critical role of the use of detonation in ore extraction; David Cuello, CEO of Elexon Mining, who will address the topic of geotechnical instrumentation in risk management in caving mining and Danko Morales, Manager of Underground Mining at Enaex, who will talk about the past, present and future of technologies detonation for massive mining.

The sessions will be broadcast live by streaming, then recorded and stored within the platform. The stands of each sponsor will have available videos, interactive chat with attendees, visit metrics and advertising material. Finally, there will be a networking lounge so that attendees can interact with each other or exchange messages on the topics of their interest.