During September, a new version of this important international encounter will be held in Arequipa, Peru, which expects to receive over 60,000 people from all over the world. Their President, Carlos Gálvez, tells how they have been laboriously preparing the past two years to offer a top-level convention, and the reason why they joined the Education Ministry. “We want to identify the educational gaps so we can take advantage of the challenges in the mining industry creating great opportunities for young professionals”.

“Mining: Science, Innovation, Technology and Education”, that’s Perumin 34 motto, one of the most important conventions in the mining industry, which will be held in between September 16th – 20th at Arequipa, Peru. This international encounter expects to receive over 60,000 people from all over the world and over 1.400 exhibition booths are preparing to present their innovations to the attendees. 

The main topics expected to be addressed are the positive impact of the mining industry and the challenges this important productive sector faces, like the great opportunities that mining presents for Peru’s sustainable growth.

We talked to Carlos Gálvez, Perumin 34´s president, who explained that “In order to make this version of Perumin possible, we have worked for 2 years gathering professionals in the industry related to similar topics and from different countries, who have presented over 500 high-quality papers, which means an historical record of papers submitted.

The leader of this global encounter added that they have simultaneously developed 4 “Hackatones” and 2 events on Technology, Innovation, Communications, Automation and Robotics (TICAR) with the participation of over 1,000 young professionals and college students from 45 different universities, who have presented very important innovations.

Gálvez also talked about the creation of “Perumin Inspira” (Perumin Inspires), a space where 180 sustainable development projects were presented, specially targeted to bring solutions to the communities of the high Andean area. Many of the projects seek to optimize water quality, minimize emissions and the development of circular economy. 

Regarding the model countries, Gálvez points mainly to out Australia, “it is a country as miner as Peru, standing out in development and innovation technology. They also export a significant amount of technological and innovative services that were firstly developed for the mining industry, but later on they scaled to solve requirements of everyday life.

For Perumin 34´s president, the main opportunities for the Peruvian mining industries are in the south mining corridor and in the north copper belt. In both cases we count on at least six or more identified copper deposits in the north and, in addition to that, some iron deposits in the south. Developing these projects could easily double our mining production, and given the clear proximity and alignment of these deposits we could exploit them with a mining cluster outlook that uses shared infrastructure. It would be a great opportunity to reduce the total CAPEX, minimizing the operating costs and increasing the return on both groups of projects.

“There is no need to explain that the bigger the return the bigger the tax revenue, which will allow Peru to build an educational platform that put us in that knowledge industry by 2050”.

Incorporating the youth.

In this version Perumin will exponentially increase the target audience, with the incorporation of the Peruvian Education Ministry and t diverse professional disciplines.

“The mining industry is too important to be restricted to miners, geologists and metallurgists. To optimize our competitiveness, we need to call all professional disciplines to contribute to solve technological challenges that allow to maximize the value of our mineral resources to achieve the goal of incorporating new generations in this knowledge era”, said Gálvez.

In this sense, he explained why this version of Perumin has given so much importance to the young audience: “Peru’s next generations requires to be inserted in the knowledge industry, that is why we have summoned the Education Ministry to study the best way to close existing educational gaps for this purpose, and we want to open the information about mining companies in order to the innovation and technology proposals can be tested under real conditions”.

“We think that identifying educational gaps and taking advantage of the challenges the mining industry presents, give opportunities to our young professionals and members of the academy. The challenges of the mining industry are a great opportunity for them”, emphasized Gálvez.