With the exception of gold projects, large mineral deposits require bulk product transport infrastructure to get the product to market. On average they say it takes 30 years from discovery to development for a large mineral deposit. Most of this time is taken up building certainty and gaining the approvals required in order to build enough confidence to invest the capital. At any one time there are lots of projects that are waiting for certainty around the infrastructure and in many cases there are whole mineral regions that remain undeveloped.
MEC Underground Coal Delivers Mine Planning Solutions
Faced with tight customer deadlines, MEC Mining recently delivered multiple mine planning and production scenarios for a major underground coal producer. The scope included a “first principles” mine design and bottom-up productivity review for Continuous Miners and Longwall operation. Coal reserving and production scheduling of multiple scenarios were executed with XPAC which delivered the required inputs to financial modelling.
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The machines are coming!
Automation in mining has been very slow to catch on. The reason is that much of the present batch of automated machines follow a sequence rather than think for themselves. When a sensor detects something out of line, safety protocols intervene and the sequence stops, undermining their cost effectiveness. Mining is a very dynamic environment and little things like rocks on the road present a complex challenge for a pre-programmed machine.
Silver – The World’s Most Versatile Metal
Silver – that precious, shiny white metal – has traditionally been highly prized for its symbolism of wealth and prestige and its associated use in jewellery and coins. However, silver is currently much more commonly used for industrial, medical and electrical purposes, such as in household goods, solar panels and mobile phones.
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Lunch and Learn Session: Pit Optimiser for Coal and Stratified Deposits
In this session you will learn:
- Purpose of LG pit optimisation tools in the strategic planning of coal and stratified deposits
- Inputs and steps to complete a Lerch’s Grossman optimisation on a sub-block model
- Results and outputs from optimisation tools
- How to apply the results
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What drives innovation?
Since the federal government has been bombarding us with political messages about innovation, I started to reflecting on what really drives innovation. I can’t speak for other industries but I would like to tell you my story. Everyone knows that the mining industry is tough right now. Back in 2012, MEC (my consulting company) collectively decided that we needed to be innovative to remain competitive as the mining boom slowed down.
Fast Facts About Aluminium
The modern world owes much to aluminium, a silvery-white, soft, non-magnetic, ductile metal. Indeed, the aviation, construction, electronic, automotive, energy and food industries – just to name a few – would all be unsustainable without aluminium.
Underground Coal Lunch and Learn
Engaging conversation in the underground coal business was the key take-away from the latest lunch and learn session presented by Geoff Watson at MEC Mining. Ranging from technical experts to senior industry executives, the audience demonstrated some creative thinking when faced with longwall design and operational challenges.
From the Director’s chair
I’m writing to you today from my new desk in our open plan office. It’s quite a cosy layout, with everyone effectively sitting on one great big long centre desk. Prior to our move I had an enclosed office, which at the time I thought was great because nobody hear confidential phone calls or see my screen when. Well now I’m fully converted to open plan. It can get a little noisy as we don’t have any policies about silence and making phone calls in quiet rooms, and in fact, a little banter is encouraged. The brilliant part is that now everyone knows what is going on with everyone else’s work. Collaboration has really lifted and the time we spend in meetings has declined because you can just yell out. Everything seems to happen faster in this environment.
Why grads don’t operate equipment anymore
I started my career 18 years ago on a salary of $50,000 which was good money at the time. Mining was in a downturn and there weren’t too many jobs around. I sent 85 job applications and got one interview which thankfully went well and I got the job. Throughout the early part of my career a truck operator would get paid around $85,000 and most grads aspired to operating equipment for 6 months, motivated in large part by the extra money. Senior engineers in the 90’s were also actually mostly senior, many had aged enough to go a little grey or bald so it was understood that career aspirations would most likely take a while to play out.
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