I recently chaired the new technologies session at South Australia’s Copper To The World Conference and was impressed by what’s happening here and overseas.
Innovation-and especially technological innovation-is the latest copper industry buzz word.
Why? Because world demand for copper keeps rising-ironically enough due to technological shifts in mobility, clean energy and connectivity, to name a few.
Meeting that demand is getting a lot tougher. The world’s biggest mines are not only very old, but new deposits are rarer and much harder to work due to where they are or how deep the ore.
South Australia (SA) sees it as a challenge and is putting a lot of effort in boosting supply from 250,000 tonnes a year now to 1M by 2030.
The Copper To The World Conference, which brought together miners, government and experts from around the world to showcase innovation was a smart way to help get there.
It’s clear that Tier 1 discoveries won’t meet future copper demands, so a range of Tier 2 copper discoveries will be crucial. That means helping smaller explorers and miners to compete with larger Copper miners on cost, health and safety and importantly on meeting new and increasing Standards on environmental sustainability in copper mining.
Speakers from the International Copper Association, Newcrest Mining, OZ Minerals and BHP identified interesting new areas of innovation including…
1. Innovation in rolling and crushing of copper ore at BHP
2. Roll out of Electric Vehicles at BHP
3. OZ Minerals identified the importance of building a culture of innovation across the workforce, and that innovation does not always mean technology innovation
4. Newcrest looked at the emergence of AI, robotics and big data and its applicability to deal with the big challenges of today and tomorrow
5. They also looked at what technologies would have the biggest impact on copper mining going forward
6. Hal Stillman from the ICA urged SA to back copper innovation and referred the conference to the progress being made in Chile through collaboration in an industry venture capital fund.
Innovation to reduce the costs of copper mining and improve sustainability is very important for our industry, but is absolutely critical for South Australia .
The state’s copper production is now about 17% of SA’s annual exports and getting it higher is not only possible, but looks like underpinning its future growth for a long time to come.
For a reference to the Conference presentations , you can go to…: http://www.minerals.dpc.sa.gov.au/about_us/initiatives/south_australias_copper_strategy/copper_to_the_world
Cheers
John Fennell