BHP warns skills shortage will hinder metals output

BHP Group, the world’s biggest miner, warns that a shortage of skilled workers from mining engineers to mathematicians will hamper efforts to meet soaring demand for metals crucial to the energy transition.

Increasingly advanced technological expertise is needed to discover and access new deposits of “difficult to find” key metals such as copper and nickel, Laura Tyler, BHP’s chief technical officer, said in a speech in Melbourne on Thursday.

“They are becoming deeper, harder to access, in more challenging regions,” Tyler said.

“As we automate and electrify our operations, move work to remote operating centres, change the very equipment our maintainers look after, we have to train for new skills.”

Demand for copper — a core metal in almost every electrical technology from power grids to electric vehicles — is expected to double over the next 30 years, while the need for nickel, a key component in lithium-ion batteries, will quadruple, Tyler said.

Both “future facing” metals are key to BHP’s growth plans, along with fertiliser ingredient potash, as consumption of its main commodity iron ore plateaus and it winds back its exposure to coal.

To meet demand for the “green metals”, by 2040 the world will need 21% more mining and geotech engineers and 29% more metallurgists, Tyler said, citing PwC research.

“We need to train them now.

Even as we retrain our people to meet the challenges of the new way of operating, we know this will not be enough,” she said. “We need more technologists. More data scientists. And more mathematicians.”

Demand for less skilled forms of labour in the sector will drop, thanks to automation of vehicles and equipment, she said.