The mining industry is notorious for its volatile nature as commodity prices fluctuate. History shows that it's the companies that can adjust to the market changes the quickest that lead the pack. Mining on a 5-year old mine design that was based on a Whittle shell all those years ago can mean you're either leaving value in the ground, or more detrimental, you're now mining in areas where profitability is going South... With almost a decade of Whittle open pit optimisation ex

Rampura Agucha is a zinc and lead mine located on a massive sulphide deposit in the Bhilwara district of Rajasthan, India. Rampura Agucha is located 220 km from Jaipur. It is north of Bhilwara, and northwest of Shahpura. Rampura Agucha is 17 km southeast of Bijainagar on NH 79. The mine is owned by Hindustan Zinc Limited (HZL), and has the world's largest deposits of zinc and lead. Rampura Agucha deposits were discovered in August, 1977 by T. C. Rampuria, a geologist with the

How sure are you that your mine designs have the minimum number of switchbacks? Have you tested the impact of having one switchback less, how that reduces your strip ratio and down-the-line costs, not to mention the health & safety of your employees ...? What about your benches & stacks, do they honour the geotechnical slope angles to prevent slope failure...? Your ramp systems on your interim high-walls - do they tie up with your final design and serve as dual access for tha

Have a look at this interesting YouTube presentation by Danah AL-Enezi. It's a test conducted to gather data in understanding the liquefication of soil during an earthquake.

Are you 100% confident that your Excel calculations are correct in determining fleet numbers? Are your roads accurately set-up in terms of stop signs, single carriage areas, steep gradients, single-bay dumps? What happens when you have congestion in your pit, how does Excel cater for that? With the HAULSIM simulations you can set up your site accurately to generate realistic results in terms of fleet numbers. The simulations allow you to run a host of possible scenarios, to e

Another great YouTube clip from the guys at Atlas Copco illustrating the principles of Block Caving. Note how it differs from Sub Level Caving in that the whole block caves, whereas with SLC the caving is done level by level. Any comments from the experts most welcome!

Take control of your career and get empowered by these mine planning courses. Companies want their employees to do the job using software, and this is exactly the exposure you get when you create a mine design and schedule during these courses. For your convenience, there is an online booking facility to secure your spot and avoid disappointment: "https://www.schoolofrockmining.com/book-online" Alternatively send me a mail at: info@schoolofrockmining.com and I’ll gladly assi

A very warm congratulations to these mining engineers from Kumba Iron Ore, completing the OPMS Basic & Advanced trianing course this week. Kumba was the first company to acquire RPMGlobal's OPMS scheduling package, and with 6 years under the belt of successfully using OPMS, the company's mine planning skill-set is growing from strength to strength. Well done Nkhangweni, Fundiswa, Masentle and Willie!!

So, you had a consultant do mine planning work on your project - great. The consultant used a variety of specialised software packages to do e.g. a Pit Optimisation, Mine Designs and a Mining Schedule - great. The consultant gave you Excel spreadsheets, a PowerPoint presentation with screenshots and a Word document of the work - great. The consultant also showed you on his/her computer what the work looks like in the software - great. But eventually the friendly consultant le

Native gold is an element and a mineral. It is highly prized by people because of its attractive colour, its rarity, resistance to tarnish, and its many special properties - some of which are unique to gold. No other element has more uses than gold. All of these factors help support a price of gold that is higher than all but a few other metals. Trace amounts of gold are found almost everywhere, but large deposits are found in only a few locations. Although there are about tw