The German Day at the PDAC 2022 is organized by the Competence Center for Mining & Mineral Resources at the Canadian German Chamber of Industry and Commerce Inc. (AHK) and the German Resource Agency (DERA) and is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action.

The program will include a series of short presentations and a panel discussion as well as networking opportunities. The German Day offers the possibility to discuss current bilateral industry topics in Mining. 

Agenda:

02:00   Welcome
Yvonne Denz, President & CEO, Canadian German Chamber of Industry and Commerce

02:05   Opening Remarks
Gerhard Schlaudraff, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany

02:10  Introductory Keynote
Kimberly Lavoie, Director General, Policy and Economics Branch, Land and Minerals Sector, Natural Resources Canada

02:20   Presentation: Germany’s Energy Transition - A Raw Materials Matter
Dr.-Ing. Sven Uwe Schulz, German Resource Agency

02:35   Presentation: The Green Transition and Strategic Innovation

Doug Morrison, President & CEO, Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI)

02:50  Presentation: Sustainable Magnesia Production for Non-Refractory Markets

Dr. Franz X. Spachtholz, Chairman of the Board, President & CEO, Baymag Inc.

03:05  Coffee Break and Networking

03:15  Panel: Steering Critical Minerals in Sustainable Directions

Sander A.J.R. Grieve, Partner, Head of Mining Industry Team

Bennett Jones LLP Ian M. London, P. Eng, MBA, Executive Director, Canadian Critical Minerals & Materials Alliance

Christopher Schmidt, Partner, Director Mining, Incomet Capital GmbH

03:50   Armchair Conversation

Dirk Harbecke, Chairman, Rock Tech Lithium

Dr. Franz X. Spachtholz, Chairman of the Board, President & CEO, Baymag Inc

4:20     Closing Remarks

Dr. Martin Wedig, Managing Director, German Federation of International Mining and Mineral Resources (FAB)

4:30      End of Event

Our confirmed speakers:

Sander A.J.R. Grieve

Partner, Head of Mining Industry Team, Bennett Jones LLP

Sander Grieve practises public market finance and mergers and acquisitions. While Sander acts for clients in a number of industries, he focuses on global mining exploration, development and extraction.

Sander is an active contributor in national, provincial and local politics, providing policy and communications advice to political leaders. He employs this knowledge in advising clients in relation to their interface with matters of public policy and government entities.

Ian M. London, P.Eng, MBA

Executive Director, Canadian Critical Minerals & Materials Alliance (C2M2A)

Over the past fifteen years, Ian has been actively engaged in the emerging advanced materials sector. Currently in semi-retirement, he serves as Executive Director of C2M2A, an industry-led multi-stakeholder network that seeks and provides collaborative solutions to advance Canada’s significant potential in the global critical material supply market. He also chairs Canada’s seat on the International Standards Organization’s Rare Earth Technical Committee (ISO/TC298), serves as a committee member of ISO/TC 333- Lithium, co-chaired Canada’s Rare Earth R&D Initiative (2015 – 2021) and serves on the Advisory Board of the Rare Earth Industry Association. In 2012, Ian launched the now-biennial Critical Material Symposium series under the aegis of the Metallurgical Society of Canada. He has appeared before Canada’s Natural Resource and Finance Parliamentary Committees on several occasions.

Over his career, Ian has held executive position in the power sector and with engineered component supply chain organizations and served on the Boards of several clean technology companies.

Ian holds a BEng (Metallurgy) from McGill and an MBA - Schulich School of Business.

Douglas Morrison

President & CEO, Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI)

Douglas Morrison has 14 years of operating experience in the deep nickel mines of the Sudbury Basin, where he became the Superintendent of Rock Mechanics and Mine Design at Inco (now Vale). He has since spent 15 years as a consultant at Golder Associates working on strategic mine design, productivity, and safety issues in mines around the world.

He was based in Belo Horizonte Brazil, and from 2005-2010 he was Golder’s Global Mining Sector Leader in Toronto. Throughout his career he maintained an advisory or Board role with Canadian research organizations such as CAMIRO and MIRARCO. Douglas Morrison has held key roles at CEMI since 2010 including Chair in Holistic Mining Practices and in 2012 he was appointed President and CEO. In January 2014, he became the Director of the Ultra-deep Mining Network.

Christopher Schmidt, M.Sc.

Director Mining & Fund Manager SGI79, Incomet Capital GmbH

Christopher is Director Mining and Partner at Incomet – a mining advisory and investment firm out of Munich. Since 2020 is he also Fund Manager for an international mining investment fund, which invests in Junior Mining companies. He has more than 10 years’ experience leading mining operations in Africa and developing mining projects in North America, South America and Europe and combines a wealth of operational knowledge and technical expertise.

Christopher was the former COO of CRONIMET South Africa from 2015 until 2019 and responsible for the Chrome and PGE mine. Prior to Cronimet, Christopher was instrumental in establishing the German mining network and the German presence at PDAC.

Since 2020 Christopher is also technical advisor mining to a large 20-million-ton Copper Mine in Armenia. Christopher is also founder of a mineral exploration company called ANS Exploration, which is exploring East Africa since 2022.  

Christopher holds a Master of Science in Mining Engineering from Technical University Freiberg in Germany.

Sven-Uwe Schulz

Deputy head, German Mineral Resources Agency (DERA)

Sven-Uwe Schulz is deputy head of the German Mineral Resources Agency (DERA) in the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), the federal geological survey of Germany. That is a subsidiary organization of the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Change. Sven serves as head of the unit ‘Evaluation of Mineral Resources’ of DERA. He has more than 20 years experience in the fields of mining engineering, consulting, project management and project evaluation. Schulz worked for two engineering consultants and a university before he joined DERA in 2013. He holds a doctoral degree of Technical University of Berlin, Germany (2008) as well as a master’s degree in mining engineering (2001) of the same university.

Franz Xaver Spachtholz

Chairman of the Board, President & CEO, Baymag Inc.

Franz studied mining engineering at the universities of Clausthal, Aachen and Berlin. In Berlin he got his PhD graduation in 1997. Franz joined Baymag in May 2019. Prior to this he worked in the potash industry and held several management positions in Germany and Canada especially in the fields of mining, operations, underground waste management and consulting. Since January 2020 Franz is CEO & Chairman of the Board of Baymag Inc., Calgary, Canada.

Dirk Harbecke

Chairman & CEO, RockTech Lithium Inc.

Dirk Harbecke is an international manager, entrepreneur and investor. Among others, he worked for BCG and was co-founder and CEO of ADC African Development Corporation AG, which developed into a leading pan-African financial services provider under his direction. Harbecke completed his MBA studies at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland