by Richard Roberts, Editorial Director, Beacon Events

IMARC’s Innovation & Investment Alley is back in 2026 and so is the industry’s most impressive line-up of mining technology leaders and emerging players.

A major annual event on the industry’s international calendar, IMARC is set to welcome more than 500 solution providers from around the world to the ICC Sydney from October 27-29.

At least 150 new names will feature in the 20,000-square-metre exhibition area, including the event’s unique Innovation & Investment Alley which returns after a stellar 2025 debut. Spotlighting breakthrough technologies, the dedicated zone brings miners, METS leaders and investors together.

“For Liberate Minerals, IMARC brings together the three groups we need to accelerate commercialisation — resource owners, strategic partners and capital,” says Liberate business development manager, Ben Apfel.

An Australian critical minerals technology company developing a closed-loop, low-energy refining pathway to unlock value from complex ores, concentrates and mineral waste streams, Liberate Minerals will be joined by a host of exciting start-ups at IMARC 2026.

Companies such as LoopX, Hypermine, TeraGlo, TerraEye Technology and rising mining tech stars, CorePlan, Emesent, NextOre, Razor Labs, SensorMine, Stratum AI, MOVUS and Pointerra, will sit alongside sector leaders, including Seequent, Hexagon, IMDEX, SAP, Sandvik, Epiroc, Maxgeo, Metso and Pronto Software.

It represents a critical concentration of technology and innovation at a time of “unprecedented change” for miners and developers of projects advancing to meet rising demand for many minerals and metals.

“The sector has repeatedly reinvented itself in response to global demand, technological change and shifting political dynamics,” says Deloitte national mining and metals leader in Australia, Nicki Ivory. However, she says, “the pace and scale of transformation have reached a new level”.

Ivory, who will speak at IMARC 2026, last month wrote an op-ed with another Deloitte partner, Ian Skelton, that zeroed in on the bigger role new technologies such as AI and automation are expected to play in the more robust, durable and flexible operating strategies miners must adopt to deal with fast-changing markets, demographics and community mandates.

The idea of a “smart mine”, a concept not long ago, was becoming a strategic priority for operators, they said. “Future success will depend on adaptability. Companies that diversify into emerging commodities, embrace digital technologies such as AI and autonomous systems and invest in long-term transformation will be best positioned to navigate industry change and capture future growth opportunities.”

It’s a thesis likely to get a lot of airtime at IMARC 2026.

“I think the urgency around replacing reserves, the urgency around changing government policies that are supportive to their business and the urgency around rising costs necessitating better use of technologies to improve outcomes or speed outcomes is more universal this year than it was last year than it was the year before,” says IMDEX CEO Paul House.

“The industry is not just focusing on spending more, it is now focused on getting more value from every dollar invested.

“That is why productivity remains such an important thematic and why it connects so directly to the Imdex value proposition.”

An SAP spokesperson says the industry is “grappling with rising operational complexity driven by deeper and lower-grade deposits, persistent cost and capital pressures, workforce shortages and the dual challenge of increasing production while reducing emissions”.

“Commodity price volatility and evolving regulatory demands around safety, environment and critical minerals add further pressure,” she says.

“Improving productivity through better adoption of AI, data and technology has become essential.

“Digital transformation is enabling mining companies to achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency and integration. Through digital platforms companies can streamline operations, optimise human resources management and create interconnected, intelligent supply chains.

“This shift not only reduces costs and inefficiencies but also improves agility and responsiveness to market changes.”

Sanjeev Kumar, CEO of maintenance software firm MOVUS, says AI will “clearly have a significant impact” on mining in future. “But we believe the real shift will be from AI that simply provides more information towards AI that supports decisions and action.

“Mining has become very good at generating data,” he says.

“The next step is connecting information across previously isolated systems and using it to understand what is happening operationally, what is likely to happen next and what people should do about it. That is where we see prescriptive AI becoming particularly important.

“We also expect much greater interoperability between technologies. Mining operations already have substantial investments in OT systems, condition monitoring, historians, SCADA and specialist platforms. The technologies that create the most value will increasingly be those that can work across this environment rather than creating another data silo.

“A third area will be the continued development of new sensing approaches that make previously difficult or uneconomical problems visible. Last year, our Ultra vSense innovation combined triaxial vibration, temperature and true RPM measurement to address challenging slow-speed applications.

“This year we are exploring another major opportunity: asset-level energy intelligence. Our FitPower technology is being developed to provide non-intrusive visibility into the electrical behaviour and energy performance of individual motor-driven assets.

“The future is therefore not one technology. It is the convergence of better sensing, connected data and AI-driven decision support.”

IMARC’s Innovation & Investment Alley and content program spotlighting the role of new technology in miners’ plans to tackle maintenance, labour and energy cost and productivity challenges will again be a major attraction for operators attending this year’s event.

A free Mining Guest Pass gets them access to the entire IMARC conference program including, for the first time this year, Maintenance of Competence (MOC) workshops delivered with Mines Rescue, the event’s Mining Operators & Capability Program and Hosted Buyer Program.