James Packer recently threw a spotlight on this question by saying he regretted not having a direct stake in the resource sector.

“There are a number of people with equity in mining projects and good luck to them. They saw things that more people in this room wish they had seen than they did, myself obviously included,” he told an Australian Financial Review lunch in Sydney.

In fact, Australia’s industrial and resources sectors seem further apart than ever, despite returns on investment from gold and copper mining that would make a factory owner drool.

Industrial bosses saw no such barriers in previous booms in the late 70s and early 80s, when companies such as ACI, HC Sleigh, TNT and even News Corporation held direct stakes in the mining industry.

This time around, industrial companies with investment in resources are almost impossible to find.

Wesfarmers is a possible exception with its coal division, although the Perth-based conglomerate has always had resources within its ambit.

Washington H Soul Pattinson is another example but the Sydney-based group is also atypical of the industrial sector.

It counts investment, coal mining, pharmaceutical retailing and building products among its core businesses.

Sir Arvi Parbo, who was chief executive of Western Mining between 1971 and 1990, has seen a number of resource booms and has a rare perspective of the long-term trends that shape the resource industry.

He said the world had changed since earlier resource booms.

“There is no longer the attitude that developing Australia is important, which was one of the strong motivations until the 1970s,” Parbo said.

“One of the senior ministries in Canberra was National Development.

“Minerals projects were in remote areas and governments and public opinion strongly encouraged creating population centres, economic activity and employment in such places. There were actually taxation incentives for people living in country areas.”

He said current attitudes against regional development were aided by environmentalists and globalisation.

“The extreme environmentalists are now opposed to economic development of any kind.

“Instead of building mining towns, people now fly-in, fly-out from capital cities.

“Globalisation has added to this. People no longer have the affinity to their locations that existed previously.

“Many companies operate globally, Australia is just one geographical location for them and they have no particular feeling for it. All they are interested in is making money.”

Parbo said other factors included the short-term time frames of business generally and large capital costs.

“People in non-mining businesses have much shorter term attitudes,” he said.

“Chief executives are said to have a useful life of no more than five to seven years. They tend to concentrate on results in the next year or two, their remuneration is closely tied to this and they find it difficult to think in terms of tens of years which is necessary in the minerals industry.

“Large capital costs of minerals projects are no doubt a consideration. The exploration end of the industry where capital is still counted in millions instead of billions is very high risk and people in other kinds of businesses are simply not prepared to accept this.”

Jason Beddow, chief executive officer of Argo Investments, which has a long history of investing in industrials and resources, agrees with a number of these points.

“The scale of resource projects is much bigger than in previous booms, as is the amount of capital required,” he said.

“I think the long time frame of resource projects also discourages industrial companies from investing in the sector.

“All the easy deposits have been discovered, so there are long time frames for investing in discovery and development. That doesn’t suit industrial companies.”

Beddow said other factors could include the GFC and a lack of skills.

“The current boom kicked off around 2003 or 2004. The GFC hit only a few years later, which forced everyone to look hard at their own businesses.

“If any industrial companies were thinking about getting into resources, the GFC put a stop to it and there’s still too much uncertainty to revisit those ideas.

“Another factor could be the lack of skills.

“The country produces a handful of mining engineers every year and thousands of accountants. Who would want to get into an industry where there’s such an intense competition for skills?”

While a large part of the Australian business community looks set to continue ignoring resources, a handful of companies, such as Soul Pattinson, are reaping large profits by going against the trend.

Soul Pattinson chairman Robert Millner said bank lending policies made it more difficult for industrials to invest and helped to create opportunities for cash investors, such as Soul Pattinson.

“Banks are reluctant to lend to the resource sector so investors need to be able to use their money,” Millner said.

“We have no borrowings and always invest cash. We have been able to move into resource companies at times when others have not wanted them.

“They have been very fortunate investments for us.”

Through its subsidiary New Hope Corporation, Soul Pattinson has been a shrewd investor in coal seam gas companies.

New Hope sold its 16.7% stake in Arrow Energy last year for $576 million, which included a profit of $326 million.

The company still holds a 17% stake in Dart Energy and reinvested in coal seam gas by taking equity positions in Planet Gas and Westside Corporation.

The group is going even further into resources, targeting copper in the Cloncurry district.

New Hope was recently granted two of four applications for exploration licences and will begin a drilling campaign in the near future.

Meanwhile, Soul Pattinson in the past year has doubled its investment in CopperChem, which operates a small open cut copper mine and copper sulphate plant.

A copper concentrate plant was commissioned in October and plans are already being made to double production.

Soul Pattinson’s initial investment in CopperChem was made in 2009 and was followed a year later by the on-market purchase of a 7.4% stake in Exco Resources for about $9 million.

Exco is a Cloncurry specialist, searching for major copper deposits in partnership with Ivanhoe Australia.

Soul Pattinson has already made a return of more than 100% on its Exco investment with the receipt of a special dividend of $10 million from last month’s sale of the Cloncurry copper project to Xstrata.

It’s the kind of wealth creation that is typical of the resource industry, in which patience and persistent effort are often rewarded by big returns.

But it looks like these will remain off limits for industrial companies as long as their leaders remain in the current mindset.