Mining World Congress London 2026: Key Speakers

The Mining World Congress London takes place on 3–4 June 2026 at the Kensington Conference and Events Centre, London W8 7NX, bringing 200 delegates and 25 speakers across four programme pillars: mining exploration, critical minerals, mining investments, and artificial intelligence in mining. For rare earth and critical minerals professionals, the event sits at an unusually timely juncture — Western governments are accelerating supply chain investment, and the EU Critical Raw Materials Act requires 10% domestic sourcing of strategic materials by 2030. The full rare earth and critical minerals events calendar for 2026 is tracked separately.

Mining World Congress London 2026 — Programme and Themes

The four pillars of the 2026 programme map directly onto current market pressures. China controls approximately 70% of global rare earth processing capacity, a concentration that has driven both US and EU policy responses since 2022. The critical minerals pillar addresses this structural dependency directly, covering project financing, exploration strategy, and supply chain diversification.

McKinsey’s MineSpans platform has forecast that dysprosium and terbium — the heavy rare earths essential to high-performance permanent magnets — could face supply deficits of up to 75% below demand requirements by 2030 without substantial new project development. McKinsey has separately estimated $5 trillion in critical mineral investment is needed by 2035 to meet energy transition demand. These are the numbers that frame the investment conversations at an event of this kind.

The AI in mining pillar reflects a broader industry shift: geological interpretation, resource estimation, and exploration targeting are increasingly AI-assisted, changing how junior and major miners allocate exploration budgets. London is an appropriate venue for that conversation — the AIM market lists more junior mining companies than any other exchange globally, and the city’s mining finance ecosystem feeds directly into early-stage project development worldwide.

Confirmed Speakers at Mining World Congress London

Elizabeth Foote, a Partner at McKinsey & Company, leads the firm’s work on Scope 3 decarbonisation across materials value chains. Her perspective spans sustainability strategy and energy transition for industrial companies across materials, chemicals, water, and energy — directly relevant to rare earth end-use industries facing increasing ESG scrutiny from downstream customers.

Simon Popple, Managing Director of Brookville Capital, brings the retail and high-net-worth investor lens. Popple developed the BRIDGE evaluation system — covering balance sheet, resources, infrastructure, diversity, grade, and exploration — for assessing junior mining companies, and has contributed regularly to Kitco and MoneyWeek’s Metals & Miners publication. His presence signals that the 200-delegate format draws both operator and investor audiences.

Sophie Orme, Commercial Director at RheEnergise, represents the energy storage angle. RheEnergise’s High-Density Hydro® system uses a proprietary fluid 2.5 times denser than water to enable pumped hydro storage under small hills rather than mountains — relevant to rare earth professionals because permanent magnet generators using neodymium and dysprosium are core to hydro turbine design. RheEnergise received an £8.25m UK government grant for a 250kW demonstrator and is targeting 100MW deployment by 2030.

Dr Ash Johnson, Director at IGS (International Geoscience Services), brings government-to-exploration pipeline experience. IGS, spun out of the British Geological Survey in 2011, works with national governments, the World Bank, and exploration companies on pre-competitive geodata and mineral prospectivity assessments — including critical minerals. IGS has active projects in Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Mongolia, Suriname, and Ethiopia. Building national geological datasets is how countries attract mineral investment, making IGS’s model directly relevant to rare earth exploration strategy in frontier jurisdictions.

Richard Morgan, a former senior government relations executive at Anglo American with responsibility for political risk and policy advocacy across the company’s operations in Southern Africa, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Australia, now works in advisory roles covering critical minerals. His background spans the UK Foreign Office — including Head of Public Diplomacy 2008–2010 — before joining Anglo American. The critical minerals policy and Africa mining angle is central to his current advisory work.

Tanya Matveeva of Kamni Chain participates in the supply chain and digital traceability segment of the programme. Supply chain provenance and traceability are growing compliance requirements for rare earth and critical mineral buyers in the EU and US.

Who Attends and Why It Matters

The 200-delegate format is the defining characteristic of the Mining World Congress London. At that scale, the event functions as a focused professional meeting rather than a trade show — the audience typically comprises project developers, exploration geologists, institutional and retail investors, equipment suppliers, and policy-adjacent advisors. London’s position as the global hub for mining finance means the delegate list skews toward capital allocation decisions: who funds which projects, at what terms, in which jurisdictions.

That mix of operator and investor audience is commercially significant. Events that attract both segments create the deal-flow conversations that larger, more diffuse conferences rarely generate. The Mining World Congress is organised by miningconferences.org and sits within London’s broader mining events calendar, which includes the larger Resourcing Tomorrow event in December.

Rare Earth and Critical Minerals at Mining World Congress London

For rare earth investors and professionals specifically, the event’s critical minerals pillar intersects with several live market dynamics. China’s rare earth export controls — extended and expanded since 2023 — have raised procurement costs for Western magnet manufacturers and accelerated government-backed diversification programmes in the US, EU, Japan, and Australia. The EU CRMA’s 10% domestic extraction target by 2030 is driving project financing discussions across European and Greenlandic jurisdictions.

McKinsey’s supply gap projections for dysprosium and terbium frame the investment case: if those deficits materialise, projects currently at prefeasibility stage become strategically critical assets. That is the context in which speakers like Elizabeth Foote (McKinsey) and Dr Ash Johnson (IGS) are presenting, and it is the context in which investors are evaluating junior miner exposure.

Registration is open at miningconferences.org/register/. The 200-delegate capacity means the event fills ahead of the June dates; early registration is advisable for those tracking rare earth project pipelines and critical minerals investment in the London market. Further background on rare earth elements and pricing is available from the USGS Rare Earth Statistics and Information resource.