With burgeoning demand for critical minerals globally, there is a need for secure, sustainable and resilient supply chains to ensure countries can capitalise on this momentum and their resources.

This was highlighted by speakers at the Future Minerals Forum (FMF) conference, a yearly global critical minerals conference, being held this week in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Delivering the opening remarks on January 14, Saudi Arabia Industry and Mineral Resources Minister Bandar bin Ibrahim Alkhorayef lauded the momentum achieved by FMF thus far.

Now in its fifth year, the FMF this year launched the Future Minerals Barometer to track progress and development of mineral value chains for supplier countries.

In one of the sessions of the opening day, focusing on the role of governments in unlocking supply responsibly, Alkhorayef pointed out that the global demand for critical minerals was evident, and increasing, driven by the energy transition and AI and digital technology uptake.

He emphasised the need to secure future demand, by circumventing previous mistakes whereby countries lost their resources without fully capitalising on their value.

While this is “easier said than done”, Alkhorayef advised that countries pursue a balanced approach to being competitive, citing Saudi Arabia as an example of this.

He explained that the country had the resources and ways to extract it, the requisite energy supply to process the minerals it chose to, and location advantages for transporting these minerals.

Further to this, Saudi Arabia required the correct know-how, which was why it was seeking the right partners to assist, Alkhorayef explained, given that it was very mindful of the impact of mining on regions.

He said there must be cognisance of both the economic and social impact, noting that Saudi Arabia had a good history of using its natural resources to benefit its citizens, having successfully done this with its oil deposits, and would look to duplicate this success with its critical minerals endowment.

Canada Energy and Natural Resources parliamentary secretary to the minister Claude Guay elaborated on Alkhorayef’s points regarding the correct partnerships, noting that the country on January 13 signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia as its shares the same views of a multilateral world, with Canada intending to play an important role in fostering this.

He said the country’s approach would be to assess its critical minerals resources on a per case basis, ascertaining how much it needed for its own use, how much the world needed and how much processing capacity the country had, and forming alliances based on that information.

Pakistan Petroleum Minister Ali Pervez Malik also acknowledged Saudi Arabia’s support for the country and expressed that Pakistan was open to partnering with more countries to tap into its considerable resources potential.

He outlined government’s role as reducing friction within the system, and reducing uncertainty, given that the industry called for multiyear commitments.

Offering an African perspective, Mauritania Mining Minster Thiam Tidjani indicated the need to design for the future, overcoming current restrictions. For example, he pointed out that the country’s supply chain was currently limited, and must be bolstered and expanded to more regions in the country to fully capitalise on its various mines.

He also emphasised the importance of political stability and a stable legislative framework.