Tepid international demand for metals pushed by recession fears and China’s weak financial restoration have completed little to shake the idea amongst miners that battery supplies are heading for an epic bull run.

That was the sentiment of hundreds of executives, traders, authorities officers and bankers who crammed right into a convention centre in Toronto for the previous 4 days to showcase their belongings, community and strike offers. For the occasion organizer, the Prospectors & Builders Affiliation of Canada gathering highlighted the business’s push to be a part of the answer within the worldwide transition to cleaner power.

“The theme is really getting most people to know their imaginative and prescient of the longer term — which is zero emissions — and the true significance of the mining business to assist us obtain that,” PDAC President Alex Christopher mentioned in a Wednesday interview. Copper — the wiring metallic that’s key to the power transition — was prime of thoughts for base metals producers on the gathering, although “lithium” was the most-searched phrase on the organizer’s web site, he mentioned.

The frenzy for battery metals has prompted a flurry of exercise from traders not sometimes related to the mining business, together with automakers and pension funds — a theme that got here up throughout panel discussions. Governments in North America and Europe have additionally began making strikes to encourage home metals manufacturing to counter China’s dominance.

One small agency, Giga Metals Corp., drew a number of folks to its sales space to find out about its three way partnership with Mitsubishi Corp. to advance a nickel mission within the western Canadian province of British Columbia, in accordance with improvement supervisor Lyle Trytten. The Vancouver-based agency even obtained a pitch from a synthetic intelligence supplier.

“We at all times have to welcome these new methods of occupied with issues in what is typically seen as a legacy enterprise,” Trytten mentioned in an interview.

Lancaster Lithium Inc.’s Chief Government Officer Penny White got here to the occasion primarily to talk with the monetary group in regards to the West Vancouver-based agency’s lithium brine property in New Mexico earlier than going public by way of a reverse takeover. Whereas she met brokers, financiers and traders, she additionally had approaches from suppliers of direct lithium extraction know-how and a gaggle providing lithium belongings — prompting her to bid on one mission.

“It’s been very profitable,” she mentioned in an interview. “I’ve been focused by lots of people who’re notably on this particular business.”

The occasion drew 23,819 attendees this 12 months, greater than a 3rd greater than final 12 months’s abbreviated June occasion when PDAC returned to in-person programming after a pandemic pause.

“We’ve seen a extremely good crowd this 12 months, with a number of constructive engagement,” mentioned Christopher, who ends his two-year time period as PDAC president when the convention closes. He’ll be succeeded by longtime mining analyst Raymond Goldie.