One of the biggest roadblocks to such change is not technology or cost, but culture. When you have been doing something for 100 years, it’s not easy to change. In mining today, we still tend to look at our business as separate units that bolt together, rather than as a unified system. When you talk about a mechanical cutter costing $20 million to acquire and $100 million to implement, that’s typically where the conversation stops…even though the technology adds black to the balance sheet when considered as part of whole-mine, life-of-mine operations.
Mechanical cutting is an example of a technology that enables the implementation of additional technologies such as ore sorting at the face, underground. What if combining mechanical cutting and ore sorting at the face reduced waste by 50 per cent? What is the impact on the energy, water and environmental footprint equations? Such a reduction is forecast to cut energy consumption a minimum of 35 per cent, water consumption 50 per cent and tailings footprints 50 per cent as well. In other words, the knock-on savings are enormous. System thinking, flow-sheet thinking, is what has been missing in our industry. But that’s starting to change, in lockstep with mining culture.
To mobilize support for technical initiatives within an organization, you need to undertake a series of social process steps, as opposed to technological steps. This is something that ReThink Mining excels at. Our level-setting process and internal Collaboration Readiness Level methodologies help us get parties rapidly to where they need to be in order to collaborate successfully, then to accelerate collaboration once it is in motion. We align our strategic directions with those of participant companies, ensuring that we’re all pointing, then moving, in the same direction. We fulfil a ‘trusted broker’ role, providing a place that everyone knows is safe to openly discuss and share internal information and IP.
