Even the most enthusiastic chief executives are likely to give a sober assessment of the mining industry at this year's Diggers and Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie.
Weak commodity prices have hurt company share prices and led to mass job cuts over the past 12 months, but the pain may not be over yet.
A report from Newport Consulting recently showed almost 80 per cent of mining leaders are reducing capital expenditure and thousands more mining jobs could be shed this year.
In the face of the doom and gloom, companies such as Newmont Mining, Australia's largest gold producer, believe they can ride out the volatility through better productivity and efficiency.
Newmont's Asia Pacific Senior Vice President Tom Palmer, a speaker at Diggers, has said his company has "a few plans" up its sleeve if the gold price falls again.
Mr Palmer's optimistic outlook is mirrored by home grown iron ore miners such as Atlas Iron and mid-tier producer Fortescue Metals Group, which have both had to make deep cuts and changes to cope with weak prices.
"Fortescue is completely safeguarded by the fact that its operating costs in the very long term have become so competitive," Fortescue Chairman Andrew Forrest said last week.
Other executives with a glass half full approach will welcome the results of a new report which shows the value of Western Australia's top 100 companies has almost trebled in the past 15 years.
Consulting firm Deloitte released the report to coincide with the start of the annual Diggers and Dealers gathering.
It shows the biggest WA listed companies have grown almost four-fold in a decade and a half to be worth $132 billion.
"Despite some of the challenges faced in the WA economy over the past 15 years, market capitalisation growth of our top companies as demonstrated by the Deloitte WA Index has been phenomenal," Deloitte Clients and Markets Partner Tim Richards said.
"This outstanding growth aside, FY15 has still been a challenging year."
Deloitte's WA index lost more than 11 per cent over the past year, driven by an overall slowdown in WA's mining sector and weaker commodity prices.
To kick of proceedings at Diggers, former White House adviser Gene Sperling will join the likes of Newmont's Tom Palmer and Rio Tinto's Director of Australasia exploration Ian Ledlie.
Share
