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COVER

Conference call

rom the beginning, when Paydirt was launched
F to coincide with the World Diamond Conference
in Perth, the magazine and sister publication GMJ have
been intrinsically linked with the company’s events.

Paydirt’s conferences are essentially intrepidness and integrity. It provides
the magazines in physical form, provid- miners and explorers not only with the
ing juniors and mid-tiers opportunity to opportunity to meet investors but also
promote themselves to investors and government (both African and Austral- tured the bubbling exploration sector in
other stakeholders and discuss issues ian), media, NGOs and service compa- that State in the years leading up to ma-
and agendas directly relevant to their in- nies. It ensures all stakeholders in the jor discoveries such as Prominent Hill
terests with peers. Australian-African mining scene are pre- and Carrapateena. More recent crea-
sent in the same room and offers an op- tions such as Latin America Down Under
portunity to debate the advantages and and Paydirt’s Battery Minerals Confer-
challenges of operating on the African ence set out to repeat the successes,
continent. providing delegates with both insight and
There was just a handful of Australian
companies operating in Africa in 2003.
By the end of the decade there was more
than 150 companies active and ADU
was the forum where many of the new
arrivals formed their investment cases.
As with ADU, the other conferences in
the Paydirt stable have been successful
in shining a light on neglected or misun-
derstood segments of the industry.

Paydirt’s biggest success continues
to be Africa Down Under which flour-
ished from a crowd of 70 in 2003 into
one of the largest resources forums in
Australia. It remains the biggest African rare access to executives and ministers.
mining-focused conference outside of The outlier in the Paydirt conference
the annual Mining Indaba in Cape Town, basket is NewGenGold. Organised in
attracting more than 1,200 delegates JV with programme founder Keith Yates,
from over 40 countries, including min- NewGenGold is a professional develop-
isterial delegations from 12 African na- ment forum showcasing the best gold
tions in 2019. discoveries of recent years. No spruik-
ing, no company profiles, just case stud-
ies of discoveries to inspire gold explora-
The Australian Nickel Conference tion geologists.
started soon after the first edition of Pay-
dirt and has been a constant presence
since, despite the nickel sector’s roller-
coaster ride over the last two decades.
In the boom times it gave investors and
service providers rare access to com-
pany executives while in the many lean
years it provided a stage for companies
to remind the investment community and
mainstream business media they were
still there.
It is a similar story for the South Aus-
tralian Resources & Energy Investment
ADU’s success is based on the key in- Conference, which identified and nur
gredients of the Paydirt brand; people,

Page 28 NOVeMBeR 2019 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT