Artificial Intelligence, or AI, seems to be everywhere these days and so I guess its no surprise its come knocking on copper’s door too. And that’s good news.
From discovering new deposits to helping improve mine operations, it seems AI is shaping up to be one of the most flexible and innovative technological breakthroughs mining has seen for a long time.
A year ago BHP announced that it had teamed up with tech giant Microsoft to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to boost copper recovery at Escondida in Chile, the world’s largest copper mine.
Apparently operators there are applying AI recommendations to real time data from concentrators to optimise initial processing. Part of the reason why Bloomberg recently forecast that BHP will overtake Codelco as the world’s largest copper producer this year.
It’s future in operating mine sites is only beginning to be felt it seems, but its already helping find commercial deposits much faster, a global problem.
Just this year California based, Kobold Metals, said it had found “one of the world’s biggest, high-grade large copper mines” in Zambia by using Artificial Intelligence. Backed by Bill Gates’ fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Kobold says it’s now fast-tracking the estimated $2B mine with construction predicted to start by 2027.
It’s an interesting development as high tech companies, startups and investors who previously had only a passing interest in copper mining are now turning their attention to it in a big way. That’s probably not so surprising given that copper holds the key to the future, crucial for decarbonisation and electrification and much more.
Which is why demand keeps going up, but its not just mining applications where AI will impact copper. Singapore multinational commodity trading company, Trafigura, recently predicted that use of AI and data centres could add up to 1M metric tons in demand by 2030.
We’ve been in this space for a while of course. Our deep dive tech roadmaps into net zero copper mining have long explored how useful AI will be to help us get there. It seems the future is here!
Cheers, John Fennell.
