Second, quality is king in resource
developments. Some discoveries are called
“
company makers” – these are deposits with high
quality resources and giant scale. Kalgoorlie,
Olympic Dam and the Bowen Basin all fit in
this basket and can weather cyclic commodity
markets and generate sustained wealth. Minex
Consultants estimate that for base metal
discoveries from 1985 to 2003 globally, 12%
of the deposits deliver 53% of the total
contained wealth.
Many Australian deposits are either too
complex or too low quality to justify commercial
development (our nickel laterite resources are a
prime example), so we need a strategy to deliver
“
company makers”.
Positioning Australia
So what can we do differently to better manage
the tension between industry’s bottom line and
Australia’s need to deliver sustained wealth from
its mineral endowment?
One solution is to better balance today’s pressures by
long-term industry transformation through research and
development, but on a national scale our efforts still remain
fragmented. The industry and research community need to
put together the pieces of the puzzle – from exploration to
metal production and manufacturing.
One area where Australia is a world leader is in the
exploration domain, where a national vision and strategy has
been developed to unlock Australia’s hidden resources.
(
i)
The National Mineral Exploration Strategy has three core
elements: pre-competitive geoscience information, mineral
exploration investment and national geoscience research.
A core part of delivering this strategy is UNCOVER which aims
to bring together earth scientists in an innovative, structured,
nationally coordinated and strategic way to deliver competitive
advantage to Australia.
Initiatives such as UNCOVER, led by the Australian Academy
of Science, are fundamental to changing the way we collaborate
and innovate in geoscience.
UNCOVER provides a national vision to deliver the knowledge
and tools to characterise and confidently explore under cover.
As the name implies, it is designed to drive exploration under
cover and in frontier terrains that have received very little
exploration attention. The four key initiatives are:
•
Characterising Australia’s cover to know where and how to
confidently explore beneath it.
•
Documenting Australia’s deep geology to understand where
large mineral systems are likely to be developed.
•
Documenting the timing of ore body formation relative to
the formation of the Australian continent to allow better
exploration targeting.
•
Characterising and detecting ‘distal footprints’ of ore
deposits, providing a new toolkit that is best tuned for
Australia. Through new sensing technologies these subtle
signatures of underlying deposits can be measured and used
to focus exploration.
The opportunity for the exploration industry is large. This
initiative will bring new data, interpretations, understanding
and products to unlock Australia’s mineral wealth.
The opportunity for the research and survey communities is
new collaborations and an understanding of the continent from
mantle to the surface.
For Australia, this could deliver new investment and inform
better decision-making throughout the value chain.
Why is this so important? Without this new momentum,
the minerals industry will inevitably decline. Australia has a
massive global advantage thanks to its geology – almost 60%
of the continent has not yet been explored because of the issue
of cover, but it will never be explored unless initiatives like
UNCOVER succeed.
Photo courtesy of Cameco
FOOTNOTE
(
i)
www.scer.govspace.gov.au/files/2012/12
/
National-Mineral-Exploration-Strategy.pdf
RIGHT SOLUTIONS |
RIGHT PARTNER
www.alsglobal.com
Servicing the mining and
exploration industries
for more than 30 years.
Specialty services include analysis of gold and PGE by fire
assay, aqua regia extraction and cyanide leach; multi-
element analysis by ICPAES and ICPMS, fused disc XRF
for a variety of mineral types including iron ore, bauxite,
nickel laterite, uranium ores and mineral sands as well
as Davis Tube Recovery (DTR) test for the economic
evaluation of magnetite rich ores.
Comprehensive sample preparation
and analysis services for the mining
and exploration industry.
>
> Onsite mine and process support
laboratories.