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1) B2Gold, a Canadian mining company, is buying Sabina Gold & Silver for about $824 million. This allows for B2Gold to gain control of the Back River Gold District property in Nunavut, Canada, which holds multiple high-potential mineralized zones that could increase B2Gold's reserves. “We are confident that the district has strong untapped upside with numerous avenues for resource growth,” B2Gold chief executive officer Clive Johnson said in a statement. The acquisition increases B2Gold's reserves to 9 million ounces and its measured and indicated resources to 18.5 million ounces. This news comes after the major acquisition of Newcrest Mining by Newmont Mining, signaling a bullish take on the price of gold going forward.
2) In a recent report, titled "Tracking the trends 2023: The indispensable Role of Mining and Metals," Deloitte mentions the trend that the mining and metals workforce is aging with the looming retirement of many experienced employees and the challenge of recruitment and retention. The danger here is that with many of the workforce retiring, critical knowledge and skills will be lost while the demand for these critical minerals will be growing on the back of the green transition. Mining employment has fallen almost 21% over the past years in the United States and in Canada, 80,000 to 120,000 workers will need to be hired by 2030. The advance of technology and how it changes how we work, will also change the dynamic of the mining jobs. “In particular, the use of remote operations centers or ‘nerve centers’ is creating new roles, such as nerve center orchestrators and data scientists, integrated master schedulers, and team performance scientists,” says Deloitte. Working from home or remotely, is an efficient way to attract more talent, such as engineers, and have a good retention rate. The report also states that currently there are nearly 50% if skilled engineers that are reaching the retirement age in the next decade with many mine workers being at least 46 years old.