London mining shows clashing is not a good idea

   City Investors Circle – London

Monday the 24th June saw two mining conferences in London on the same day!

Having attended both, I can say that attendances seemed to be down on the previous year, and you have to blame that on two conferences occurring on the same day, pure and simple. There are, after all, only a finite number of mining investors and institutions in London.

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City Investors Circle – London

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Monday the 24th June saw two mining conferences in London on the same day!

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Having attended both, I can say that attendances seemed to be down on the previous year, and you have to blame that on two conferences occurring on the same day, pure and simple. There are, after all, only a finite number of mining investors and institutions in London.

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It is hard to believe the organisers of whichever event was the second one to be arranged didn’t know about the first one at the time they confirmed their dates. I accept that venue availability comes into play, but urely a clash could have been avoided?

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I started off at the Benchmark Battery Metals conference, held in the UBS Building at Broadgate.  Here there are excellent facilities, and a superb auditorium, but it was, perhaps, one third full, possibly less.

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The Benchmark World Tour event in London  has been running for a few years now, and I think it’s fair to say that the fizz has left the battery metals space, and that would certainly account for some reduction in audience size.

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They had organised a decent lineup of presenting companies, including Neometals, and a good selection of keynote speakers.I have spoken to a member of the team and he expressed his disappointment at the lower attendance this year.

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I then jumped across London to the Mining Journal event, arriving as lunch was being served.  I was again surprised there weren’t more people, as lunch draws virtually everyone into the same area, so making it easy to assess the numbers in attendance.

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I have to be honest I thought their line up of companies was poor, and failed to generate any excitement for me, with the exceptions of Ivanhoe, who are connected to Robert Friedland, and a much  larger concern, valued at billions of dollars, with elephant size projects, and Gold Road.

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Some of the presenting companies seem to be on a never ending presentation circuit having already presented in London at least on one other occasion recently at 121 Mining Forum. AIM listed Bluejay Mining fall into this category, as do Argonaut, Cardinal, and Emmerson PLC.

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Hopefully in 2020, these two conferences will avoid clashing with each other, and both benefit with higher attendances as a result.