Amanda Lacaze used what was likely her last public speech as Lynas Rare Earths' chief executive to rebuff the 'boofhead' image of mining and warn that power outages could plague her company's Kalgoorlie refinery for years to come.
Ms Lacaze, who is set to step down as Lynas' boss next month, told the National Press Club on Wednesday that a lack of mining graduates looms as a major headwind for the industry in Australia and the broader Western world.
'Last year in the US, they graduated 35,000 lawyers and 350 mining engineers. In Australia, where we rely so heavily on mining, we face a similar challenge — universities that used to graduate hundreds of mining engineers now graduate them in their tens,' she said.
Ms Lacaze believes a perception problem of the industry in Australia still exists, particularly on the east coast.
'Some people still think about mining like it's coal mining in Pennsylvania in the late 19th century. That is not what mining is,' she said.
'It is not a bunch of boofheads moving dirt around, it's a high tech industry which offers opportunities for people in all sorts of different fields.'
The outspoken Ms Lacaze took the helm of Lynas almost 12 years ago when the company was on its knees. She became a trailblazer for women executives in the industry after building up Lynas to be the Western world's dominant force in rare earths.
Ms Lacaze is leaving the company in a broadly good operational position but its most recent development — a $780 million refinery in Kalgoorlie that processes rare earth ore from the Mt Weld mine near Laverton — has been constrained by electricity reliability issues.
In November, Lynas said major outages of clean energy supplied by Western Power to its Kalgoorlie refinery had put production about a month behind schedule. Western Power's responsiveness and reliability has improved in the new year, according to Ms Lacaze, but on Wednesday she said problems could persist until the end of the decade.
'We have been able to find a couple of areas where maybe we were contributing to a reduction in power reliability. However, I think that even the Western Australian government accepts that this is not going to be fully resolved until 2029, so we continue to look at alternate mechanisms to ensure we have reliable power,' she said.
The Cook Government last week said it would establish a $1.4 billion clean energy fund to develop 'more affordable and more reliable' renewable power infrastructure across WA. But the infrastructure that would power Lynas' Kalgoorlie refinery is not expected to be online until the end of 2029.
Ms Lacaze also cautioned policymakers against 'throwing money' at low-quality rare earths projects as the Western world races to break China's stranglehold on the market.
'It seems that governments all over the world are racing to bestow largesse on even the most marginal of projects as they pursue their objective to develop resilient supply chains,' she said.
'I would suggest as the world attempts to rebuild the broken supply chains, it is useful to consider the challenges faced and overcome by Lynas. Our experience shows that succeeding in this market is much more complex than simply throwing money at the problem.'
