Senior business reporter Simon Hartley wraps last week's annual conference of the New Zealand branch of the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in Dunedin.
Negatives have abounded in New Zealand's mining sector during the past two years.
Combined job losses from Solid Energy and Oceana Gold are beyond 1200, global coal prices have hit rock bottom, gold's price remains mediocre and crucial investment capital has become scarce.
Many companies find themselves on a knife edge and in survival mode while in the health and safety arena, proposed workplace safety legislation has been under the blowtorch of criticism - to a backdrop of three quarrying fatalities during the past year.
Despite the negatives, patient optimism outweighed pessimistic undertones at this year's AusIMM conference in Dunedin, attended by more than 260 delegates, as companies gave updates on their activities.
A strong theme in luncheon conversations was the effects of the industry being caught up in a ''cyclical'', almost predictable, event.
One delegate noted the public recognised and dealt with the cyclical nature of residential housing, and they have quickly become educated in the cyclical effects of the dairy industry of late, so the mining sector downturn and its aftermath should not be seen as a crisis.
A more senior delegate pointed out that while many are talking about the ''cyclical nature'' of the mining sector, few remember harder times before 2000, during a six year downturn.
A former industry leader was bemused that when commodity prices were peaking, the sector assumed they would just continue to rise, and when they slumped, no one believed they could recover.
''You can't tell me these things can't be picked - but the 'when' is the tough part,'' he said.
Industry lobby group Straterra's chief executive Chris Baker conceded Solid Energy, and Bathurst Resources were respectively in a ''crisis'' and a ''predicament''.
''Within the cycle, jobs are the human cost, and that has has been significant,'' Mr Baker said.
Transtasman malaise
However, the problems facing New Zealand's coal sector were not unique as 85% of Australian coal production was uneconomic at current prices and more than 10,000 jobs had been lost, Mr Baker said.
''It's been a harsh path for most commodities; coal, iron ore and oil,'' Mr Baker said of the respective price plunges _ anywhere from 40% to 70%.
Last week, the Australian mining malaise swept through Dunedin, with US owned foundry Esco, citing the Australian mining downturn, to close with the loss of 34 jobs.
Separately, 74 staff at the Australian owned Bradken foundry in the city had their work cut back to four days a week because of weak New Zealand product demand.
Debt laden state owned enterprise Solid Energy will find out in a few weeks if it will face receivership or, more likely, a controlled asset sell down.
Meanwhile, Bathurst must survive on domestic thermal coal production while it waits out an expected three years for global coking coal prices to rise to commercially viable levels.
Much of its West Coast holdings are billions of tonnes of the specialist coking coal.
Mr Baker expected Solid Energy would be taken down the track of a controlled sell off, it being unlikely that one buyer could take all.
It could be sold in ''three units'' - North Island operations and on the West Coast - broken down to export coking coal and domestic thermal coal.
He expected prices for the specialist coking coal, crucial for steel production, would experience an upswing in three to five years, with industrialisation in the emerging Indian economy and China underpinning the boost.
''You could say Bathurst has been in crisis for three years, but it is still there,'' Mr Baker said.
Bathurst and Solid Energy's predicaments were balanced by Oceana Gold thriving and growing in the same environment; albeit in gold.
Positives included the arrival in New Zealand of Evolution Mining, in Northland, and Newcrest Mining, to the central North Island volcanic plateau, plus separate exploration projects for industrial garnets on the West Coast, he said.
Analysts had recounted a major global downturn in available capital for the mining sector, one singling out the ''under 40 year old'' investors as not interested in supporting the resource sector.
Mr Baker acknowledged when it came to direct investment in a fossil fuel company, the under 40s might well keep their cash in their pockets.
But, he said, in general most investors understood economies needed the resource sector to fuel the construction industry or to manufacture cars and computers.
''If you don't grow it, if you don't mine it, you haven't got any,'' he said.
Sharing the data
Energy and Resources Minister Simon Bridges told the conference expanding the geological data available to would be minerals explorers, as he had done for the oil and gas industry, would provide a welcome boost to the resource sector.
Mr Baker did not believe there was a hiatus in exploration and New Zealand was getting a ''reasonable amount of recent interest''.
''Newcrest [Mining] is a significant interest.
''They are all legitimate and high quality operations,'' he said.
Another way to boost offshore investment would be to ''streamline'' regulatory approval of permits, including the work of the Government permitting agency New Zealand Petroleum and Minerals (NZPM), the Department of Conservation, and the legislation covering resource management, conservation and heritage.
''On the West Coast, Doc is working with two councils, under two separate Acts, but doing it all as one process,'' he said.
He said it was ''too big a leap'' to have NZPM rolled into a ''one stop shop'' to process all facets of permitting and permissions, but it could become a ''lead agency'', given its overlapping interests with many agencies.
''This is about how [all the] regulations interface, it's where we need to do better ... particularly to attract new investment,'' Mr Baker said.
Access to land also remained a ''significant issue'' for the sector.
While ''entirely ruling out national parks'' from mining, Mr Baker singled out the other highly protected schedule 4 areas, saying some did not have the conservation values which merited the schedule 4 protection, a point he was sure Forest and Bird would disagree on.
He wanted the sector to have the ability to explore such areas, then to have the debate on the trade off between the needs of the environment and the economy.
''If you are lucky enough to find something, that's when the debate should begin,'' he said.
''Look, times have been tough and will stay tough for a while. But there are plenty of positives coming into New Zealand,'' Mr Baker said.
Quarry concerns
With health and safety an industry focus during the conference, Mr Baker was ''proud'' of the advances and investment made since the 2010 Pike River coal mine tragedy, which claimed 29 lives.
However, the industry had recently collated aerial views of hundreds of quarries across the country, of which only a tiny number were engaged with WorkSafe; even though they probably represented as much as 90% of the quarry sector output.
Most delegates were startled when the data, collated by industry led MinEx (NZ Mining Industry Safety Council), was revealed.
It dawned on them that the sparse green dots were the health and safety ''engaged'' quarries, while the near carpeting of red dots were virtually unknown operations.
''There's more accidents in the quarry sector than open cast [pit] mining,'' Mr Baker said.
Following a quarry accident which killed the site owner/operator at a North Canterbury quarry in June, WorkSafe had since said he had been operating the site illegally and did not hold the required certificate of competence.
''The North Canterbury operation was one that wasn't engaged [with WorkSafe],'' Mr Baker said.
He said the application of the health and safety regulations from 2013 had to be ''fit for purpose'', and made to cover the quarry sector, highlighting accidents were higher in that sector in New Zealand than in Australia.
''For the vast majority, there's no official [health and safety] presence ... we've got a long way to go, given the issues, particularly with quarries,'' Mr Baker said.
