value. Meeting declining grades with greater production, larger
equipment and rising productivity cannot continue indefinitely.
In fact, mining productivity has already declined under the
weight of these challenges. PwC recently noted that while other
sectors have improved their performance by approximately
20%,
mining labour productivity has declined by roughly 50%
since 2001.
So what can we do differently? One answer is to better balance
today’s pressures with long-term industry transformation. Some
companies are already leading the way, but on a national scale our
research and development efforts remain fragmented and punch
below their potential to address these continuing challenges.
A second solution is to manage the tension between collaboration
and competition. Across the industry, we share many common
issues and ore body quality and location is almost always the
biggest driver of value. If we collaborate more effectively we can
grow our impact by sharing risk and reward.
Minerals Down Under
was designed to foster the collaborative partnerships to help put in
train some of these solutions.
Our research partnerships tackle short-term industry challenges,
but also invest for the longstanding benefit of the industry. The
research portfolio covers the value chain from exploration through
mining, mineral processing and metal production.
The breadth of this national research effort is well illustrated
in WA where partnerships with industry, academia and the State
Survey link our work into many aspects of the resources business.
This network extends further through national and international
linkages that can focus the best resources on a given problem.
In exploration,
Minerals Down Under
is part of the national
UNCOVER initiative led by the Australian Academy of Science.
UNCOVER is a national vision for exploration geoscience in
Australia and brings together the geoscience community to achieve
practical goals that will aid in better understanding the localisation
of mineralisation and drive exploration for buried ore deposits.
The Australian landscape provides unique exploration
challenges and
Minerals Down Under
is developing a suite of new
exploration technologies that tackle the challenges of depth and
cover. We are also developing new modelling and detection tools for
mineral discovery. A wonderful example of great, new technology
that will underpin mineral discovery is the ASTER satellite map
of Australia released earlier this year. This is a global first for
continental-scale mapping of our resource endowment.
In mining,
Minerals Down Under
and its partners are linking
smart sensing, ICT and automation technologies to enable real-
time monitoring and control of material throughout the mining
cycle. These integrated sensing and response tools will transform
the industry and we are already seeing this trend play out in the
Pilbara. Imagine a mine site that is as well informed as the average
teenager via an interconnected sensor network, providing real-time
technical and environmental data and immediate control response.
In mineral processing, there is still plenty of scope to optimise
unit process performance. Perhaps the greatest challenge however,
is transforming the economic value of resources through new
processing technologies. Large resources of gold, nickel and iron
ore are waiting to be unlocked in WA.
Although Australia is a relatively small steel producer, it does
supply the global steel market with raw material and that certainly
has global impact. Research in this area underpins exports and
productivity by tailoring Australian resources for export markets.
Further downstream,
Minerals Down Under’s
integrated steel
making technologies show enormous promise to reduce water and
emissions in steelmaking and better utilise waste slag. Australia
may soon export green metal production technologies alongside its
iron ore.
Western Australia has a strong foundation in minerals
innovation – but unfortunately this is not enough. We need to
foster a globally connected innovation culture that focuses effort
on the great strategic challenges we face. Business as usual, is not
an option.
ASTER map showing iron oxide composition in WA
MINESITE 2012
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