Micromine Special Projects Manager Paul Hooykaas recently attended the Complex Orebodies Conference in Brisbane, read below as Paul recounts some of the highlights from the event.
The Complex Orebodies conference focused on how the industry will unlock future mineral supply for the world’s most important commodities. Demand for raw materials is projected to continue to grow for the foreseeable future, which creates a challenge for the industry to meet supply demands. Over 40 industry experts from across the globe shared case studies that looked to address some of the challenges we face as an industry regarding future mineral supply.
Day 1 included presentations focusing on some of the political, social and environmental challenges faced by mining and exploration companies.
For me the most interesting presentation, on the first day, was by James Carpenter from PanAust (a Micromine client). They had an issue at their Ban Houayxai mine with the process plant performance. There were times when the gold, known to be present, was not being liberated. The problem was that this appeared to be happening on a totally random basis. They used consultants to analyse their data using machine learning. Not only was a pattern detected, but there was also a prediction (that was realised) as to where the problem would next occur.
Another interesting session was presented by Stephen Grano, a professor from the University of Adelaide. This article (about rock fingerprinting) is related https://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news97082.html
Day 1 finished with Gavin Yeates, a guest speaker, discussing ‘Leadership of Innovation in The Mining Industry’. He was a presenter at the recent IMARC mining event in Melbourne and has excellent credentials. Although the topic specifies the mining industry, it is far more generic. There is a big endorsement for running internal leadership courses and I enjoyed his observation about “KPIs and the value they have destroyed”. In question time he referred to Hardware, Software and Wetware – the latter being brain motivation.
Here is a link to a TED talk, mentioned by Gavin, ‘How great leaders inspire action’ by Simon Sinek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4
Day 2 had the most general interest for me (a bit more technical). It was interesting to explore how complexity is defined and understood as it applies to the entire mining life cycle, not just exploration. Two of the presentations (both from Nazarbayev University, Almaty) talked about ‘Projection Pursuit Multivariate Transformation’, which was an interesting concept and one that could open up opportunities in the future.
Day 3 included a session on ‘Transformative technologies to open up new extractive possibilities’, which was an area of interest for myself and closely linked to the work we do at MICROMINE. There is some really exciting work being done by mining companies and technology providers to assist in finding new methods for complex mineral extraction.
Finally, my favourite quote from the conference: “Geologists make up about three quarters of the words they use.“
