8 MARCH 2024IN MYOPINIONBy Paul Shelley, Global Vice President Innovation, MolycopTHE CRITICALITY OF INNOVATION AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ACCEPTANCE FOR THE MINING INDUSTRYThe current stateThere is sufficient evidence to say that over the past decades, the mining industry has had to face a number of challenging scenarios. Improving productivity to overcome natural factors such as decreasing ore grades, deeper deposits and harder rock mass combined with increasing environmental and social awareness has driven the industry to constantly work on enhancing processes across the whole value chain. At the same time, skills shortages have accelerated, and productivity has declined. These challenges, coupled with the declaration of the zero carbon, or carbon neutral, targets within specific, short timeframes, means our industry needs to make step-change rather than incremental improvements. This is where innovation and product development lie at the heart of a sustainable future.Recent industry research provides insight into the history of innovation in mining. Broadly, this can be summarised as an industry that is conservative, favouring incremental improvement rather than step change. It is an industry that relies on suppliers, large and small, for its innovation. Innovation has been driven mostly by cost-cutting and regulation compliance. For the case of the processing circuit, innovation has been undertaken in focused `silos' with little attention paid to how one plant and equipment project might influence upstream and downstream processes. More importantly, the source of those innovations tends to be a wide and varied network of suppliers.This view is supported by a 2020 study by Australian industry association Austmine. Austmine declares itself as the leading not-Paul Shelley
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