Speaking at the Austmine 2017 conference in Perth, Western Australia last week, Larsen said kids today were growing up as digital natives, however today’s skills were not going to be good enough tomorrow.

And that is why, he said, 125-year-old GE had entered the start-up business around digital transformation and wanted METS companies to partner and collaborate with to drive productivity through the use of internet capabilities, because the big jobs could not be done alone.

Larsen said GE CEO Jeff Immelt had responded to the global push in the Internet of Things and put it to his senior leadership team to find customers, suppliers and partners that wanted to embark on the mission with GE.

He said Glass Terra had already picked up a contract to deliver a GE digital mine platform, and it was a very exciting time for many players to be in the mining game.