As 2021 draws to a close, the Amira Global team is taking a collective breath and reflecting on the past year.
These months have been part of a major journey for our organisation and our community.
What’s new?
Over the past two years, we have taken a reinvigorated approach to understanding the environment and concerns our Members, allied associations, and research community face in resolving our industry challenges.
Our new brand launch in 2020 signalled an emphasis on the global nature of our ecosystem. Together with the Board, we reviewed Amira’s constitution and celebrated the enduring expression of Amira’s purpose.
Amira has long held strong relationships with allied associations.
Over the last two years we have strengthened our outreach by establishing a strategic alliance with the Centre for Excellence in Mining. We have also worked closely with the ICMM, particularly in the space of tailings. Agreements have also been signed with organisations around the world to create a network of test facilities under the Colabs initiative.
These relationships and alignments allow our associations mutual opportunity to develop pathways from problem to research and development and then progression to implementation and impact.
Opportunities for further leverage, either through grants or through other forms of investment remain important to Amira. We are delighted to have recently joined the CRC TiME, which will enable further financial leverage and opportunities for deployment and impact for some of Amira emerging projects in the tailings and mine closure spaces.
We have many new faces at Amira, particularly in Perth, Brisbane and Santiago. While maintaining a presence in Melbourne and taking on new staff in Brisbane, Amira relocated its head office to Perth, Australia.
Over the last two years, Amira has welcomed many new faces to the Amira Global Board and we are extremely privileged for the time and guidance they provide. In addition, Amira strengthened its Amira Africa and LATAM Boards, thereby ensuring strong and relevant regional strategies for our Members with interests in those regions. We are already noticing the impact that this influence is having on how we shape our projects and programs.
Amira has been very fortunate to be supported by some of the greatest minds – the researchers, without whom we would not be anywhere. Therefore, as well as working with Members across the globe, we will be working with research institutions to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for what they offer, what they need, and what their own aspirations are. In so doing, Amira is seeking broader engagement with research institutions globally, including opportunities to connect across institutions.
As part of our rejuvenation, Amira has had a hard look at its historical portfolio to identify processes and programs that provided the greatest impact opportunities our Members. This has helped inform the design of Amira’s Mega Programs.
These Mega Programs allow projects to be part of a greater whole and for the development of global transdisciplinary capability. Critically, these programs include opportunity for alignment with allied associations and opportunities to accelerate impact back into industry. The Amira Collaboration on Tailings (ACT) is one such initiative and we look forward to sharing more about this as next year unfolds.
What’s stayed the same
Amira was established more than 60 years ago to work more effectively on challenges that were too big for any one organisation to solve.
That ethos of delivering transformational change continues today.
Our purpose remains unchanged.
Amira’s role in industry is to develop and manage collaborative projects and activities to:
- enable the sustainable development of the minerals industry in a manner that is acceptable to society
- enhance the standing of the minerals industry among stakeholders locally and globally
- deliver new data, knowledge, technologies, products and services in order to help Members to improve their businesses.
We continue to do this by:
- working with Members to understand shared challenges
- connecting and working with researchers through our global network to address the challenge
- building the framework for the project
- providing a collaboration platform for the project to be supported through shared investment, shared benefit, and shared risk mitigation.
Amira support for projects remains unchanged.
Amira has not lost sight of the important role and valuable contributions some of the great researcher minds and efforts have provided over the years. Amira continues to value and appreciate researchers and their support teams who have for so long provided the foundation and opportunities for resolving our industry challenges. Amira continues to support current, future, and past Amira projects.
As always, Amira works with our Members to address industry challenges and seek resolution through collaborative investment in R&D+I2. Taking this notion a step further, Amira is working with Members to examine the challenges in a holistic way and seeking to identify breakthrough opportunities through an integrated approach for our industry’s great challenges of the day: tailings, decarbonisation, and water and energy utilisation.
This door is always open.
The Amira team continues to welcome input, suggestions, and queries from across our ecosystem.
What can you expect to see in 2022?
Amira has undergone significant internal change over the last two years to rejuvenate its internal systems and processes, internal governance and transparency. This has provided us with a stronger foundation as we look to the future. Notwithstanding the adage that the only permanent thing is change, our outlook and focus for 2022 is to bolster our member engagement program, escalate our efforts with the research community, and continuously work to build collaborations and pathways to ensure breakthrough innovation and technology is delivered and adopted by Members and industry.
This means we remain flexible; able to adapt as industry needs. What does not change is our commitment to Members to achieve our three key objectives.
My personal message
For over 62 years Amira has been building purposeful and impactful collaborations. These collaborations span companies of different scales and commodities and collaborations of researchers from across the world. For us, genuine collaborations are effective in co-creating mutual benefits.
At Amira we take collaboration seriously, so much so that it is the core of our internal culture. We strive to apply this ethos in the collaborations we build on behalf of our members and, importantly, in the work we do internally as a team.
Collaboration is really, really hard. While many of us think successful collaboration is about finding and working with commonalities, my time with the team has taught me that our internal collaborative culture is also much more about successful realisation from navigating different approaches, exploring alternate views, and contemplating differences of opinion … and while that is also the space where it gets really challenging for all involved, the co-created end product is far more robust!
Though it’s tough as a leader to take stock and learn every day, I’m blessed that through developing our internally collaborative culture, I get to learn from and through the diversity of thought in the Amira Global team.
I am learning that the process requires me to identify what to hold on to and what to let go of. I am learning that sometimes I need to dig deep to understand different styles of communication. I’m also learning it’s ok to sometimes step out to quiet my mind so I can better understand an alternate view. And always, there is more to learn!
No matter what, my mainstay is always holding fast to core guiding principles.
So a huge thank you to the Amira team: Anil Subramanya, Sean Helm, Olga Verezub, Hayley McGillivray, Bev Kubat, Patricio Pastorelli Ambrosetti, Ann Woolley, Angela Reed, Jacqueline Russell, and Kim Ong … you all make turning up for work an absolute joy!
In closing, thank-you to all of our Members, our dedicated researchers, our allied associations, and our supporters and advocates.
I wish you all a joyful festive season, a safe time with loved ones and friends, and a restful break before we re-join you in 2022.
Dr Jacqui Coombes
CEO, Amira Global
