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L-R: Owen Hegarty, CEEC Patron; Sandy Gray Gekko Systems and Joe Cucuzza AMIRA prepare to address the delegates at Mines and Money Melbourne 2013.[/caption]
CEEC Patron Owen Hegarty, AMIRA's Joe Cucuzza and Gekko Systems's Sandy Gray addressed the delegates at Mines and Money Melbourne yesterday to discuss why resetting KPIs represents a significant opportunity for the mining industry. Hegarty, speaking as a mining operator, commented on the gains possible when KPI's in an operating environment were set to encourage alternative profitable mineral processing strategies. Hegarty recalled the remarks made by Ian Smith, Orica's CEO at the Melbourne Celebrates Mining Dinner that the amount of electrical energy used in mineral processing is comparable to that used by Germany in a year. The scale of the opportunity to improve earnings in mineral processing is clearly significant, and as energy prices rise and ore grades decline, improving processing efficiency offers significant financial benefit.
As an equipment designer and manufacturer, Gray made the point that every mine is different, therefore multiple trials on other sites will never replace on site pilot studies. Miners can be slow to take up new technologies and innovate, although the benefits may be significant. Gray highlighted the opportunity for risk abatement of new technologies and processes to be undertaken by independent industry funded groups such as CSIRO and AMIRA, to shorten the technology adoption cycle.
Joe Cucuzza presented the value of bench-marking energy efficiency; setting a starting point against which improvements may be made. Establishing a benchmark measure for energy efficiency on a site allows executives to set appropriate improvement targets; understand the imapct of energy use in the current operation, and model the impact of energy costs as ore grades decline. AMIRA launched an energy efficiency benchmarking program this year.
Always an engaging speaker, Hegarty encouraged the delegates to review their company's KPI's with a view to encouraging profitability driven as a result of more efficient operations.
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CEEC's parton and speakers take questions from the audience[/caption]