Exploration Innovation Consortium

A national Consortium on Mineral Exploration has been developed to assist the mineral industry in developing new approaches, tools and methods, through relevant R&D activities, to aid new discoveries and increase training of highly qualified personnel.

CMIC, with the support of PDAC and NRCan, initially approached 5 companies to determine interest in working collaboratively on directing a needs and priorities exercise with the exploration industry sector in Canada, which would lead to the definition of a will-coordinated National Program. The process steps were identified as follows:

Engage the mineral industry in a needs and priorities exercise.

1. Engage the mineral industry in a needs and priorities exercise.
2. Develop themes and topics for research and development.
3. Establish the goals and outcomes for a national coordinated research program.
4. Develop collaborative research project proposals that can attract industry funding.
5. Secure complimentary funding as needed for industry supported research projects.

PDAC proposed that a process of one-on-one consultation with industry was the best approach to identify exploration needs and priorities with industry, followed by industry discussions to identify areas of opportunity for R&D in deep exploration.

Seed funding for the work came from PDAC, NRCan and CMIC, with industry contributions sought to support the process.

Currently, several companies have joined the initiative and provided financial and personnel support:

The Consortium has evaluated the major needs of the exploration sector and has decided to place its emphasis on the new concepts and technologies needed to find deep ore bodies, hidden (e.g. till covered, etc.) ore bodies, and to better extract knowledge from available data. A summary of the Exploration Initiative can be found in this section.