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MAY 2020 | www.canadianminingjournal.com | PM # 40069240

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For More InformationPlease visit www.canadianminingjournal.com for regular updates on what’s happening with Canadian mining companies and their personnel both here and abroad. A digital version of the magazine is also available at www.digital.canadianminingjournal.com

Coming in June/JulyCanadian Mining Journal looks at reclamation and closure, and mining in the Prairies. Plus our semi-annual Equipment Maintenance & Repair supplement.

ABOUT THE COVERThis month’s cover provided by Sandvik.

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MAY 2020 VOL. 141, NO. 4

MAY 2020 CANADIAN MINING JOURNAL | 3

CMJC A N A D I A N M I N I N G J O U R N A L

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CANADIANMININGJOURNAL

DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY 14 How artificial intelligence is being used to speed up the exploration process and improve the odds of success.

19 Fortinet Canada’s Graham Bushkes shares four ways miners can reduce their cyber risks.

22 CMJ speaks with Lorraine Howell, VP of innovation and continuous improvement for Illumiti, on how ERP systems can aid miners’ digital transformation processes and help them through the pandemic.

FEATURES 28 CostMine investigates how well “rules of thumb” used in mining really work, focusing on conveyor costs.

32 Miners develop best practices for operating during a pandemic.

VENTILATION 37 ABB discusses the advantages of ventilation on demand.

DEPARTMENTS 4 EDITORIAL | Will the pandemic drive digital adoption?

6 LAW | Carole Gilbert of Norton Rose Fulbright discusses how miners can manage supply chain risks related to COVID-19.

8 CSR & MINING | Carolyn Burns of the Devonshire Initiative outlines the different ways miners can be part of a collaborative response to the pandemic that will benefit communities.

10 IN MY MINE(D) | Andrea Lekushoff, president of Broach Reach Communications advises on the essentials of communications planning during the ongoing pandemic.

12 FAST NEWS | Updates from across the mining ecosystem.

43 ON THE MOVE | Tracking executive, management and board changes in Canada’s mining sector.

45 UNEARTHING TRENDS | EY’s Jon Wojnicki on steps companies can take to succeed through the next stage of the pandemic and beyond.


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Established 1882Canadian Mining Journal provides articles and information of practical use to those who work in the technical, administrative and supervisory aspects of exploration, mining and processing in the Canadian mineral exploration and mining industry. Canadian Mining Journal (ISSN 0008-4492) is published 10 times a year by Glacier Resource Innovation Group (GRIG). GRIG is located at 225 Duncan Mill Rd., Ste. 320,Toronto, ON, M3B 3K9. Phone (416) 510-6891.Legal deposit: National Library, Ottawa. Printed in Canada. All rights reserved.The contents of this magazine are protected by copyright and may be used only for your personal non-commercial purposes. All other rights are reserved and commercial use is prohibited.To make use of any of this material you must first obtain the permission of the owner of the copyright. For further information please contact Robert Seagraves at 416-510-6891.Subscriptions – Canada: $51.95 per year; $81.50 for two years. USA: US$64.95 per year. Foreign: US$77.95 per year. Single copies: Canada $10; USA and foreign: US$10. Canadian subscribers must add HST and Provincial tax where necessary. HST registration # 809744071RT001.From time to time we make our subscription list available to select companies and organizations whose product or service may interest you. If you do not wish your contact information to be made available, please contact us via one of the following methods: Phone: 1-800-387-2446 ext 3505; Fax: 403-245-8666 ; E-mail: [email protected] Mail to: Jackie Dupuis, 2nd Flr. 816–55th Ave. N.E. Calgary, Alberta T2E 6Y4.We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

MAY 2020 Vol. 141 – No. 4225 Duncan Mill Rd. Suite 320, Toronto, Ontario M3B 3K9Tel. (416) 510-6789 Fax (416) 510-5138www.canadianminingjournal.com

Editor-in-Chief Alisha Hiyate 416-510-6742 [email protected]: @Cdn_Mining_Jrnl

News Editor Magda Gardner [email protected]

Production Manager Jessica Jubb [email protected]

Art Director Barbara Burrows

Advisory Board David Brown (Golder Associates) Michael Fox (Indigenous Community Engagement) Scott Hayne (Redpath Canada) Anthony Moreau (Iamgold) Gary Poxleitner (SRK)

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CMJC A N A D I A N M I N I N G J O U R N A L

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CANADIANMININGJOURNAL

FROM THE EDITOR

Alisha Hiyate

Will the pandemic drive digital adoption?

Every business that has been able to remain open through the COVID-19 pan-demic has had to find new ways of working. For many of us, that’s meant working

through technical challenges of remote access while also finding a way to manage family demands such as child care and/or home schooling.

Remote work isn’t an option for most mine operations staff.Mining companies are used to adjusting on the fly to industry shocks – they have

plans to deal with changes in commodity prices, sudden policy changes, and political crises in jurisdictions where they are active. But the pandemic has thrown the industry some curveballs. One of the things that miners hadn’t considered in their crisis man-agement plans is the challenge of physical distancing at operations.

Guided by advice from health authorities, the industry has collaborated widely to come up with best practices to protect their employees and the communities in which they work, including the use of PPE where physical distancing isn’t possible. (see page 32).

In the absence of a vaccine, testing will also become an important tool, as underlined by an outbreak at Fortuna Silver Mines’ Caylloma mine in Peru in late April. The company reported six workers – all asympomatic – had tested positive for the virus. Meanwhile Barrick Gold has invested in 800,000 antibody tests, secured from multiple vendors, and Agnico Eagle Mines has started a pilot project for a virus test that can produce quick results to screen workers at its Nunavut operations.

That brings us to the theme of this issue – digital technology.With the disruptions caused by the pandemic, mining suppliers and service providers

have noticed that digital technologies are taking on an added shine. The pandemic is underlining the importance of the mining sector’s ongoing implementation of digital technologies, said Shannon Katary, marketing manager for Lively-Ont.-based Maestro Digital Mines in a recent interview with www.canadianminingjournal.com.

“This crisis has forced companies to realize how important it is to make sure that they can get their data in real time – there is no room for delay now,” Katary says.

And the importance of digital technology doesn’t just apply to mining operations.Companies providing exploration services and technology that incorporate artificial

intelligence and automation, such as Kore GeoSystems, are having a lot of conversa-tions around the ability to do remote work and Cloud-based software that enables people to collaborate from different locations (see page 14).

“Because our software can work from anywhere, our phone’s been ringing off the hook,” says Vince Gerrie, CEO of Kore. “Major mining companies are calling us and saying, ‘Hey, our geologists are working from home and they’re not allowed to go in the core shack. Can we upload a bunch of images to your software so they can work remotely?”

He adds: “That remote capability is much more important now than it was a month ago – the fact that you could possibly rethink the way you deploy your geologists.”

Because of the disruption they bring, crises can bring long-term positive changes. Who knows what better ways of working miners could uncover during this one that will long outlive the pandemic. CMJ

4 | CANADIAN MINING JOURNAL www.canadianminingjournal.com

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Introducing Smart and Future-Ready Tailings Management Solutions

That’s how we make the big difference.

Metso is leading the change in tailings dewatering, handling, and reprocessing by introducing the Metso VPX™ filter.

Joining Metso’s industry-leading IPS thickeners and MHC™ hydrocyclone, the new VPX™ filter features an integrated load cell weighing system for self-adjusting production, easier operation, and increased safety.

Driven by the growing volume of tailings and a scarcity of water, the Metso VPX™ filter is the answer for today’s problem—and a solution for the future and beyond.

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LAW

The COVID-19 pandemic is raising questions about risks in supply chains in all industries. For mining companies,

where operations are not temporarily shut down to comply with government directives, or when restrictions relax, success for the remainder of the pandemic may very well depend in part on the ability to continue to source the fundamental equipment, materials and services required to continue the exploration, development or operation of their projects. As many have experienced over the course of the past few weeks, some suppliers are finding it challenging to deliver and, in extreme cases, are being forced to breach their contracts or declare force majeure.

A robust supply chain is clearly a key contributor to business resiliency for mining companies when major unpredictable events such as the current COVID-19 pandemic arise. The pandemic has exposed the weaker links in the supply chain risk management practices of companies, with the reliability of both miners and their suppliers largely dependent on their ability to adapt to the circumstances and continue to deliver while protecting the safety and human rights of their employees and other stakeholders. Supply chains are at risk, and front and centre in all of this is the risk to the health and safety of workers and the communities in which mining companies and their suppliers operate.

Long-term business resiliency requires good management of systemic sustainability risksThe goal of good supply chain risk management is to make the unpredictable slightly more predictable and manageable. Good planning also can make the boundaries of any given crisis slightly easier to work within and reduce the overall impact on the business. The pandemic has shown that sustainable busi-nesses are more resilient to crises, as they are better prepared to weather the effects and will also bounce back more quickly when the storm has passed.

Whether the unexpected crisis is a recent headline topic, such as COVID-19, the “Me Too” movement or modern slavery, or one that has been on the radar much longer such as climate change, labour disputes, regulatory change or environmental liabilities, companies need to plan and be ready to withstand the next big challenge so they are not caught off guard. Also, inves-tors are increasingly considering environmental, social and gov-ernance (ESG) systemic risks in making investment decisions and are demanding more disclosure to assess whether risks are being managed effectively by companies.

By Carole Gilbert

Building sustainable mining supply chains: Lessons from the pandemic

Fast forward to the next crisis, what can be done differently?Companies need to have the right tools at their disposal to assess the sustainability risks posed by their suppliers and the right governance framework in place to mitigate those risks. This means doing ESG due diligence before entering into a supply relationship to assess the risk and selecting suppliers on the basis of the sustainability risks they pose and in light of broader risk management strategies. It also means mapping the supply chain to improve visibility of the sustainability risks posed by current suppliers. Asking suppliers to complete ques-tionnaires can serve as a good starting point and there are emerging technological platforms available to assist in inte-grating and analyzing the data collected.

Implementing the right frameworkAn effective governance framework should be driven by a carefully tailored Supplier Code of Conduct addressing the most salient risks identified in the supply chain. The way the code is drafted is important, as the adoption of voluntary codes or standards can affect legal liability for companies.

It is important that the Supplier Code of Conduct be used as a tool in the overall risk management process and not just sit on a website. Companies should prepare contractual provi-sions implementing the code into formal contractual arrange-ments that not only allocate risk, but also provide the opportunity for ongoing tracking and monitoring of supplier performance. To mitigate legal risks, initial and ongoing due diligence efforts are best undertaken using legal privilege wherever possible.

Successful crisis management and good governance go hand in hand. Allocating the resources to proactively work with suppliers and implement corrective action plans to ensure that any sustainability risks identified are appropriately managed is a worthwhile investment, as the costs of a crisis tend to vastly exceed those of its prevention.

COVID-19 will accelerate the transition towards more sustainable supply chains and mining leaders need to move quickly to stay ahead of the curve. CMJ

CAROLE GILBERT is an associate practicing corporate and commercial law at Norton Rose Fulbright’s Montreal office.


APRIL 2020 CANADIAN MINING JOURNAL | 7

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Managing the spread, treatment and long-term impacts of the novel coronavirus is a global issue. National, regional

and local governments are at the forefront of the response. But NGOs and mining companies are uniquely positioned to work with governments and take a leadership role in addressing COVID-19 in the countries where they work.

The Devonshire Initiative (DI) is a multi-stakeholder forum of non-profit organizations and mining companies. We believe that cross-sector collaboration is an important part of driving positive development outcomes in the mining context. Following the outbreak of COVID-19, DI members shared their response plans through a survey and series of discussions.

For most members the immediate response focused on the health and safety of employees and following government requirements and action. This included shutting operations, repatriating staff, encouraging physical distancing, or following quarantine requirements.

Best practice with previous pandemics and emergency response clearly indicates that a collaborative approach is essen-tial to limiting the spread of COVID-19 and to treating people who have become infected. A collaborative approach will also be required to rebuild social and economic systems when COVID-19 has been brought under control globally. Following their initial response, both mining companies and NGOs are finding opportunities to collaborate to promote prevention, support treatment, and contribute to rebuilding social and economic systems impacted by COVID-19. Collaboration can take differ-ent forms and focus on concurrent activities such as data and information sharing, collaborative response planning, and for-mal partnerships and joint ventures to implement responses.

Internal collaboration Internal collaboration includes all functions/departments in an organization’s COVID-19 response. Some examples include a multi-disciplinary task force where department heads are repre-sented and daily communications flow down to employees and external stakeholders. Department heads are responsible for working within their department and across regions to feed back information and implement the response plan.

Peer-to-peer collaborationPeer-to-peer collaboration is between organizations in a similar sector or industry. At this point, most examples of peer-to-peer

collaboration in the mining sector are based on learning and sharing ideas. In some cases, this collaboration has been facili-tated by industry associations and established peer networks, or spearheaded by individuals. For example, in March, the inde-pendent Synergy Global Consulting, the Wits Mining Institute and Global Compact South Africa began hosting regular webi-nars for social performance practitioners to share lessons learned and concerns. Industry associations have also helped with in-kind support to government health authorities. Companies in South Africa are also considering how they can co-ordinate in specific communities and provinces where they operate.

Community-led collaborationCommunity-led collaboration is guided and directed by com-munity leaders and priorities. Where relationships with commu-nities are well-established, companies and NGOs should prioritize community-led responses, which are more likely to be effective as communities better understand their own needs and challenges.

Many mining companies and NGOs have experience with community-led initiatives. Community-led collaboration is specifically important when designing relevant approaches for:w Social distancing requirements, sensitization and education;w Developing plans to ensure communities have food security,

shelter and access to sanitation;w Sharing information, developing community databases to iden-

tify vulnerable groups and tracking experiences with the virus;w Managing treatment and access to care; andw Planning for appropriate and safe burial and funerary services.

The collaborative effort from the three Tahltan Nations and Newcrest Mining in British Columbia is a good example of community-led collaboration. Together, the Indigenous govern-ments and mining company made plans related to medical support for three communities, mining operations at the Red Chris joint venture and employee rosters, access to groceries and health supplies for the Tahltan communities, and a joint work-ing group for future decisions. (Read more at Tahltan.org).

Both mining companies and NGOs have established engage-ment practices with mining-impacted communities. However, most dialogue and discussion mechanisms rely on in-person connections. Both mining companies and NGOs are looking for innovative ways to engage with community stakeholders while

CSR & MINING


By Carolyn Burns

How miners can be part of a collaborative response to COVID-19

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respecting physical distance and quarantine requirements. Where communities have access to social media, Facebook and WhatsApp have become central tools for both sharing informa-tion and driving dialogue with the community.

Cross-sector collaboration Cross-sector collaboration is between organizations from different sectors. This can include collaboration between mining compa-nies, NGOs, local governments and community organizations, regional and national governments and international organiza-tions (for example, the World Health Organization or UN agen-cies). This can also include collaboration with other industries, including other natural resource development companies, as well as health providers (pharmaceutical companies, medical supplies etc.) and mineral end users.

At the time of writing, most cross-sector collaboration related to COVID-19 is based on information sharing and financial donations in order to support the local organizations that are best placed to drive the response. For example, Kinross Gold has donated approximately $1 million across all sites to facilitate improved testing, provide medical supplies, improve health infrastructure, support local businesses and help vulnerable groups. Kinross has partnered directly with government health authorities, with mining industry associations, community part-ners, local businesses, schools and individuals. The company is actively working on a longer-term strategy looking at continued response plus eventual recovery, with lines of action likely to focus on health and local economic reactivation.

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However, many Canadian mining companies and NGOs are interested in methods to drive a more coordinated cross-sector collaborative approach in order to: 1 Follow a joint plan or road map that can inform an organiza-

tion’s response. A regional plan would ideally be led by govern-ment bodies, including health authorities. It would clearly identify the resources needed and co-ordinate private and NGO responses. It would also establish hubs for organiza-tions to share and receive information and data.

2 Leverage resources and limit overlap. Organizations are look-ing for direction and opportunities to utilize their supply chains, transportation networks, and warehouses to deliver health and medical supplies as well as other essential services; utilize under-used resources such as empty mine camps and spaces for hospital services; re-tool operations to develop health and medical supplies (sanitizer, PPE etc.); and share prototypes for required health and medical supplies.

A co-ordinated and transparent response is required to pre-vent and treat COVID-19 and rebuild our social and economic systems once we have contained the virus. Both mining compa-nies and NGOs have many resources and assets that can be used and should seek out collaborative methods for their COVID-19 responses in order to deploy those resources effectively and to be able to support both employees and communities. CMJ

CAROLYN BURNS is the executive director of the Devonshire Initiative (www.devonshireinitiative.org), a multi-stakeholder forum of non-profit.

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IN MY MINE(D)

s Canadian mining companies rushed to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak to protect their workers and operations, many dusted off their crisis communica-

tions plans and realized they hadn’t accounted for a possible pandemic. And yet mining leaders have done an incredible job of figuring this out as they went, striking a balance between decisiveness and empathy as they helped guide their employees through massive upheaval.

In mining, of course, most people can’t just work from home. Many mines have scaled back production or transitioned to care-and-maintenance operations with a small number of staff. When we emerge from this crisis, demand is sure to surge, and mining companies that have maintained good rela-tionships with their employees, as well as their customers, vendors and partners, will be in the best position to respond – so communication during this time is critical.

COVID-19 crisis communications best-practices checklistLeaders play an important role in providing accurate informa-tion while also reassuring people and containing panic. Keeping employees, customers, vendors, and partners informed has to be a top priority as we all work to contain the virus. If you’re not already doing this, here are some best practices to consider:

1 Focus on empathy. Remember that your employees and stakeholders are primarily worried about themselves, their

families and their communities, and then their colleagues and companies. Let them know that you understand their priorities and that you’re making business decisions accordingly.

2 Establish a centralized crisis-communications team: Creating a group with clear ownership for communications is import-

ant, and it should include the most senior people in your com-pany. They should meet regularly to discuss what’s happening and adjust plans and tactics as needed. Make sure the organiza-tion knows that this group is the trusted source of information.

3 Assess your stakeholders: Every group has different interests and needs, and information is important to different people

at different times. Figure out the best way to keep each group informed – so they can help you stay in business.

4 Maintain a Q&A list: Answer all of your employees’ ques-tions honestly and openly and make those answers available

By Andrea Lekushoff

The next phase of COVID-19 communications: It’s time to listen

somewhere that everyone can access. Update your company intranet with current information and FAQs, and advise your employees to consult it often.

5 Communicate frequently: Consider communicating with employees weekly, at a bare minimum, with the latest

updates, to reach those who might not regularly consult other sources. If you have a lot to communicate, consider twice-a-week or daily communications. And mix up your media, using video whenever possible to make it more engaging and personal.

6 Encourage your people to stay connected and engaged: Use technology to bring your people together, encouraging

them to connect with one another for support. Set the tone from the top that virtual happy hours, online events, conference call bingo, or video coffee meetings are actively supported.

7 Keep external stakeholders informed: Use your company webpage to update stakeholders as often as new information

becomes available, and use email for updates that affect them directly. Address difficult topics sooner rather than later, approaching them from a position of transparency and care. This will help protect your relationships and even make them stronger as the crisis subsides.

8 Be proactive by preparing for various scenarios in advance: It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen in the next few

weeks and months. But you can imagine possible scenarios (such as additional layoffs or closures) and develop messaging in advance, so you’ll be prepared should they become reality.

9 Live your brand values, but study your competitors and oth-ers: Sticking to your company values is important; your

employees need to see that your actions and communications are consistent with those of the past. But you should also pay attention to what other companies are doing. As much as pos-sible, aim to be an industry leader, but you can also learn a lot from other organizations.

Now is the time to listen and get personalNow that we’re several weeks in, how do leadership communi-cations need to evolve?

An uncertain future still looms. What do you say to your employees when you can’t predict what will happen?


A



The answer is that after weeks of communicating to employ-ees, now is the time for mining leaders to listen. Your employ-ees have legitimate fears about their own safety and that of their families and colleagues; thinking of going back to work – in confined spaces, isolated communities, or shared facilities where social distancing is impossible – could be raising anxiet-ies in ways you haven’t anticipated.

I’ve been advising my clients to use the next couple of weeks to survey employees about how they’re feeling, what’s working and what’s not, and what help they need. Consider holding virtual coffee meetings with groups of ten to fifteen people, to let them see your concern and open yourself to theirs. Listen with compassion and put yourself in their shoes – and don’t be afraid to get personal. Ask them point-blank how they feel about venturing back into a regular work schedule. Find out what measures you can put in place to help them feel more comfortable and safe right now or when they are back at work.

Inspire your team and highlight the good you are doingWhile you’re at it, find ways to inspire your teams. Your role may not have been to inspire people in the past, but these are different times. Particularly if this crisis goes on longer than hoped, your people will look to you for inspired leadership to help them get through it.

Be sure to highlight the good you’re doing. Some companies, like mining contracting and engineering firm Redpath Canada, have donated personal protective equipment (PPE) to local

health authorities, while Vale Canada has launched a $1-mil-lion challenge to spur innovative COVID-19 solutions. If your company is doing something similar, share that information externally via the media, social media and your website, to demonstrate your community leadership. And share it inter-nally, which will help employees feel good about where they work. Even better, solicit employees’ suggestions. People like to know their ideas are being heard and activated.

The fact is, we’re not likely to get an instant “all-clear”; instead, there will be a gradual, uneven transition. Through our collective efforts, infection rates will likely slow, and our health-care system will find improved ways of managing and treating patients, but the virus is not expected to disappear completely. Many employees will understandably be left with anxiety about venturing back into any kind of “normal” working life. Employers need to tread carefully, respecting their employees’ individual situations and, importantly, their individual fears.

That’s why listening to your employees now is critical. As soon as this is over, you will need employees who are ready to jump back into their roles to support the economy’s and your business’s resurgence. It’s critical to seek their perspectives, to learn what they need to get through this, to inform your strategy and help to you pivot your approach as we all emerge into a new normal. CMJ

ANDREA LEKUSHOFF is president of Broad Reach Communications, a Toronto-based PR agency specializing in crisis and reputation management, corporate communications, brand building and executive profiling. She can be reached at [email protected].

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FAST NEWS Updates from across the mining ecosytem

Worldsensing and IDS GeoRadar, both in the monitoring technol-

ogy space, have cooperated to launch a comprehensive mine safety monitoring system. The integrated system will be the first in the world to offer surface, sub-sur-face and geospatial monitoring in a single package, simplifying contracting and deployment.

The software will exploit Worldsensing’s Loadsensing internet-of-things (IoT) wireless monitoring system to reduce the costs and delays associated with traditional wired or manually read sensor networks.

The joint solution will simplify data management through IDS GeoRadar’s HxGN GeoMonitoring Hub integrated visualization and analysis platform.

For the first time, mining companies will have a single-interface monitoring system, which now includes wireless geo-technical and environmental sensors in addition to radar, total station and satel-lite inputs.

“As leaders in the IoT remote moni-toring space, Worldsensing invests in making Loadsensing technology compat-ible not only with various sensors but also with third-party software, such as HxGN GeoMonitoring Hub by IDS GeoRadar,” said Bernat Trias, Worldsensing’s direc-tor of products.

“IDS GeoRadar is committed to help-

• SAFETY | IDS GeoRadar and Worldsensing launch mine monitoring system

IDS GeoRadar and Worldsensing have teamed up to offer a comprehensive mine safety monitoring system.CREDIT: IDS GEORADAR

of technology partners in the monitoring and mining industry to offer a global solution for safety monitoring and risk management at mines.

IDS GeoRadar, a Hexagon company, provides products and solutions, based on radar technology, for mining, civil engi-neering and monitoring applications. Hexagon is a global leader in sensors, software and autonomous solutions. CMJ

• NETWORKS | Cisco to acquire Fluidmesh to expand industrial wireless offerings

Technology company Cisco has announced plans to acquire Fluidmesh Networks, a privately held company whose

wireless backhaul systems allow reliable and consistent communication. Fluidmesh solutions are quick to deploy and configure, offering customers a cost-efficient, low-maintenance solution.

The transaction is expected to expand Cisco’s presence in the industrial wireless space to include dynamic applications where reliable wireless communication is critical. Fluidmesh’s technology is designed to provide zero loss of data transfer when assets are moving at high speeds. Customers are currently using Fluidmesh’s wireless technologies in rail, mining, ports, and public transit applications.

ing customers put their data to work and we are delighted to present this software knowing that it will positively influence the mining world for years to come,” Alberto Bicci, president of IDS GeoRadar, added.

The Loadsensing system allows min-ing operators to connect and wirelessly monitor tailings dams and excavations in over 80 mines across 20 countries. Worldsensing collaborates with a variety


“With wireless technology playing a greater role in every organization’s multi-access internet-of-things (IoT) strategy, reliable wireless connectivity is paramount to organizations operating industrial IoT environments, whether that’s manufacturing, mining, rail, or ports, where wireless technology automates operations to improve safety and lower costs,” said Liz Centoni, Cisco’s senior VP and general manager for cloud, compute, and IoT businesses. “The acquisition of Fluidmesh strengthens Cisco’s offerings in this space with leading technology that’s designed to provide zero loss of data transfer at speeds in excess of 300 km per hour.”

The acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2020. CMJ



• AUTOMATION | Sandvik launches AutoMine for Trucks

Sandvik has introduced AutoMine for Trucks, which allows autonomous

haulage not only underground but now also on the surface. According to the company, this is a first for autonomous haulage in underground mining settings.

Behind the new capability is a smart handover technology that allows trucks to switch from underground to surface nav-igation mode in real time, allowing vehi-cles to continue through the ramp portal seamlessly to surface to complete the dumping cycle.

For years, mining operations have used Sandvik’s intelligent AutoMine systems for autonomous and unmanned truck haulage. They help to reduce equipment damage and allow for increased efficiency and fleet utilization, reducing unit costs. They are scalable for different mining applications and can be supervised remotely.

“At Sandvik, we’ve pioneered and delivered autonomous trucks for many years. Continuously setting the industry

standard we have now developed the industry-first, fully autonomous under-ground trucks that can operate in mining levels and mine declines including both underground and surface sections,” said Riku Pulli, VP of the automation busi-ness unit at Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology. “These trucks are set to revolutionize the mining industry, bring-ing significant improvements in mine’s productivity and safety.”

AutoMine connects directly to Sandvik

OptiMine, enabling efficient production planning and automatic dispatch of tasks to AutoMine for execution. The produc-tion progress is reported back to OptiMine for real-time visibility of automated and manual operations. OptiMine also allows equipment and people location tracking, 3D mine visualization and predictive ana-lytics to transform data into actionable insights. Integration with My Sandvik Productivity allows mines to know the real-time status of their fleet. CMJ

Sandvik’s AutoMine for Trucks allows trucks to

switch from underground to surface navigation

mode in real time. CREDIT: SANDVIK

• COVID-19 | Provix releases thermal camera

Provix, a company focused on vision enhancement for better productivity and safety, has released a thermal camera, which

measures body and face temperatures to provide companies with a proactive way to detect possible cases of COVID-19.

The company’s camera systems are typically used to improve productivity in drilling, mucking, hauling, blasting, tramming, loading and rescue operations at mines.

One of the main symptoms of a viral infection is an abnormal body temperature with a normal body temperature range of 36.5° C to 37° C.

According to Provix, its non-contact temperature detector can rapidly screen preliminary temperatures of people passing through the thermo-visual device.

The company has improved and upgraded the facial recogni-tion technology and automatic infrared facial temperature mea-surement features for this new product, which will measure forehead temperatures and report any abnormal measurements with an alarm.

The equipment will automatically save information such as a facial image, temperature record, time, name and ID card infor-mation record.

Provix reports that the new thermal camera device can store up to 10,000 records, and provides an integrated video manage-ment platform that allows for video preview, playback, alarm management, electronic mapping and other functions. CMJ

CONTINUED ON PAGE 41

http://multotec.ca/



ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

By Alisha Hiyate

s a young geoscientist in the 1990s, Vince Gerrie could never under-stand why it wasn’t a common

practice to collect more data during min-eral exploration drilling.

“If you look at oil and gas, they don’t drill a hole without taking physical rock property measurements or sending instru-ments down the hole to collect in situ data. In the mining industry it’s done, but to a much less degree – many holes are drilled with minimal measurements,” said Gerrie, who went on to found DGI Geoscience, a service provider that collects and interprets data from drill holes, in 1997.

“If you’re spending all this money swiss cheesing the ground, why are you not taking advantage of that opportunity to

invest in collecting more information and using that information wisely?”

There are differences between the min-ing and oil gas sectors that account for the difference in data collection and use, and investment in new technologies that aim to make better use of that data, says Sam Cantor, head of geology at Minerva Intelligence, a Vancouver-based cognitive AI company.

“Even though you’ve got all this mod-ern technology today, you can still walk out there with a rock hammer, a paper map and something as simple as a GPS and find a mineral deposit,” he says. “In oil and gas – without major technology and major initiatives, you can’t really find these deposits anymore.”

That said, why shouldn’t the mining sector leverage the same technology that’s proven successful in oil and gas? That’s where artificial intelligence comes in.

Even with a slow start to embracing artificial intelligence – which encompasses machine learning, automation, and cogni-tive AI – AI is starting to make its way into mineral exploration, with more companies using machine learning and “explainable AI” to produce better exploration targets, speed up the exploration process, and even act as a virtual consultant.

Goldspot DiscoveriesIn a short period of time, Toronto-based GoldSpot Discoveries has emerged as a

AI TO THE RESCUE

How AI is being used to speed up exploration and improve the odds of success

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discover patterns. Diverse training data, including mineral occurrences, geology and geochemistry data are used to train a machine learning algorithm that can then predict targets. While machine learning algorithms automatically learn on their own, without needing to be further pro-grammed, GoldSpot hasn’t dispensed with geologists and geoscientists. “We try to solve geological problems using data science as well as geological skills,” Dubé-Bourgeois explains. GoldSpot’s domain experts – geochemists, geophysicists, structural geologists, 3-D modellers – are a key part of the process, helping with quality control, interpretation, selecting data to be trained, and validating results.

“We use all their skills and enhance that with data science,” Dubé-Bourgeois says. “An example would be an algorithm with image recognition, we use different deep learning algorithms to classify rocks or structures and data sets.”

Initially, GoldSpot worked with larger companies with producing assets on brownfield targets. But in early 2019, the company started to work with juniors as well.

Dubé-Bourgeois points to the compa-ny’s work with Yamana Gold and New Found Gold as its biggest successes.

GoldSpot partnered with Yamana Gold in 2018 at its El Penon mine in Chile to find more new mineralization to

extend the life of the mine. Using histor-ical mine data such as drill data, geophys-ical data, geological and geochemistry data, a predictive lithological map was created of the property that helped speed up target definition.

“We have had multiple successes with them in helping to find new zones and tar-gets that they are currently exploring.”

Yamana has credited GoldSpot’s tech-nology with improving exploration tar-geting at El Penon, where it has recently added reserves and resources.

Earlier this year, New Found Gold, of which GoldSpot president, CEO and cofounder Dennis Laviolette is also a founder and president, reported its maiden drill hole at its Queensway proj-ect in Newfoundland cut 19 metres of 92.86 g/t gold.

The 10 hole drill program tested several targets generated from geochemical, geo-physical and structural analysis, combined with machine learning. Starting with an outdated geological map, GoldSpot used additional magnetic and electromagnetic survey data, in combination with field val-idation, its team of experts, and machine learning to produce a deep learning bed-rock map with geophysical targets.

“For some of the juniors, our work can be doing geological mapping for them, where we’d send geologists in the field, validate the targets that we did in our interpretation, and try to collect as much new information as we can to help our model afterwards,” Dubé-Bourgeois says.

GoldSpot has also started a portfolio of royalties and equity stakes from juniors who want to access GoldSpot technology.

The company is also expanding into the Australian market through a partner-ship with RSC Mining.

Dubé-Bourgeois says GoldSpot has many products in development, includ-ing a program that would help relog and reinterpret historical core from pictures. The company is also developing an “out-crop detector” that works with satellite imagery for very early stage exploration.

Minerva IntelligenceVancouver-based Minerva Intelligence was founded in 2017 and went public last May. The company offers four products in

leader in applying machine learning to mineral exploration to generate, improve and prioritize exploration targets, and bet-ter understand the resource potential of a property. The company, which was a run-ner-up in the #DisruptMining Challenge in 2017, and went public in early 2019, counts Eric Sprott, Frank Holmes and US Global, as well as Hochschild Mining as some of its biggest shareholders. Its clients include Hochschild Mining, Vale and Yamana Gold.

GoldSpot was started by a team of geologists, including chief operating offi-cer Vincent Dubé-Bourgeois – all with an interest in applying big data to mineral exploration.

“What we’ve seen is that explora-tion techniques have not evolved at the same rate as exploration tools in past years,” says Dubé-Bourgeois, who learned coding on nights and week-ends while doing an MSc. in geology at the National Institute of Research and Science. “We now collect more geo-logical information than ever before – either from portable XRF where you can take a geochemical analysis while you’re in the field and new geophysical surveys that collect more information. But with all this data, geologists can become overwhelmed with the sheer amount of it.”

GoldSpot’s solution uses machine learning to process geological data to

Top: A 3-D structural model predicting structural intensity using a machine learning algorithm.Below: Goldspot’s process. CREDIT: GOLDSPOT DISCOVERIES

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why a certain prediction was made.Because Minerva takes a different tack

focusing on explainable or “cognitive AI,” also called knowledge engineering, the company’s offerings focus heavily on stan-dardizing language, an essential step in preparing data for its AI applications.

Cantor says that geologists and miners often use different terms to describe the same sort of rock or the same phenome-non in the rocks, which makes it hard for other people or computer systems to actu-ally use this data.

“A lot of our services and a lot of our focus is really on getting control on the language of the science. That comes down to standard terminology and one of the things our system allows for is to take a project, a collection of projects, or even a whole portfolio from a company and help harmonize all of the geoscience words that they use so that a description of a copper deposit in Project A is actually compara-ble to all the geology work in project B.”

Minerva’s Solace data standardization application and its Leo document man-agement and custom tagging systems both focus on language, with both avail-


Jake McGregor, COO of Minerva Intelligence accepting first prize for the Helsinki Challenge in 2019. Minerva’s geohazard division designed an application identifying areas in Veneto, Italy, that are susceptible to landslides. CREDIT: MINERVA INTELLIGENCE

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its TERRA Mining AI suite for mining clients, including Target, a cognitive AI sys-tem that manages exploration data and generates explora-tion targets, and Driver, which analyzes drill data to extract intelligence from multiple ele-ments.

Sam Cantor, head of geology for the company, distinguishes between what Minerva does – knowledge engineering or “explainable AI” – and machine learning. Cantor explains that it’s difficult to train an algorithm to identify copper deposits through machine learning, which requires a large training set of data – thousands or millions of examples to learn from. “There aren’t millions of copper deposits for you to train an algorithm on and all these deposits are so different,” he says.

“Instead, you can read PhD theses and

top world experts’ writings on what a copper deposit is, how they’re zoned, what they look like, and then engineer that knowledge into a computer that can then take in new data and then compare it against this internal ‘copper expert’ brain you’ve built. Then you

don’t need these hundreds, thousands or millions of training examples, you just need that knowledge.”

Minerva’s approach takes different layers of data and turns them into lit-tle “chunks” of knowledge, which it calls semantic networks, then compares those against all the mineral deposit knowledge the company has in its database. The pre-dictions that are produced are explainable – i.e., you can see the reasoning behind them, in contrast to the “black box” of machine learning, where you can’t be sure

Sam Cantor, head of geology for Minerva.


https://www.westpromachinery.com/


able as software as a service (SaaS).One of the big benefits of Minerva’s

knowledge engineering approach is that it can help alleviate some of the knowl-edge loss that comes when experienced geologists leave the industry because of a downturn, and can help make up for a reduction in mentorship programs where there would be more knowledge transfer to younger geos. Both are key factors in why exploration programs have become less successful, Cantor says.

“Our type of AI is specifically tuned to capture expert knowledge and retain it in a way that can be used for either a com-puter system or other geologists,” he says.

“Like an actual expert on the topic, they can look at what you have and say, ‘Hmm, what you’re missing to make this a really good match for this model or that, is this specific piece of information, so you should go out and collect it.’ That’s the same type of advice, given the same way, that a copper deposit expert consul-tant would give you.”

The Yukon Mineral Targets is a public example of Minerva’s Target product for exploration (yukonmineraltargets.com), and, along with a similar mapping proj-ect completed for Brazil, is one of the company’s biggest successes.

The project is an updated version of something that the Yukon government commissioned Clinton Smyth, one of the founders of Minerva who has a back-ground in both geology and computer sci-ence, to create 14 years ago. The company updated the program to give potential cli-ents a better idea of Minerva’s capabilities.

The project identified 2,374 exploration targets generated using data from 22,144 stream-sediment samples. The map also identifies terrane, geology and any avail-able mineral data for each target site and compares the target with the deposit types that it best matches.

“People’s reactions to the Yukon Mineral Targets has been really great: we have people come up to the booths at Roundup and PDAC who have proper-ties in the Yukon and say, ‘Your system got my deposit type perfectly right’ – and we didn’t train it on anything, we just used our deposit knowledge. Those have been exciting successes.”

Most recently, in April, the company landed a contract with White Gold, a

Yukon explorer headed by Shawn Ryan, who discovered the Coffee gold deposit in the Yukon. The companies will use Minerva’s technology to identify multi-el-ement zones in White Gold’s data, asso-ciate those zones with relevant lithologies and structures, and then compare the results with deposits around the world to identify promising drill targets.

Kore GeosystemsRather than exploration targeting, the concept behind Kore GeoSystems is about speeding up and automating drill core logging, and eliminating and stream-lining the many tedious data entry tasks associated with it – allowing geologists more time for interpretation.

Kore began as the data analytics divi-

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sion of DGI Geoscience and became its own entity in 2015. Like GoldSpot Discoveries, Kore really got started with the 2017 Disrupt Mining Challenge.

After being crowned as one of the winners of the compe-tition, Goldcorp invested $1 million in Kore, and in less than one year, the company went from a concept and a “crude drawing” on a napkin to a successful deployment of a commercial product, says CEO Vince Gerrie.

Kore’s Spector system is comprised of Spector Optics image capturing system, a machine that core is fed into; Spector Geo visual core logging software, which has an intuitive touch screen interface for rapid data entry; and Spector AI, a machine learning suite of applications that assists with geotechnical logging and rock clas-sification.

In designing Kore’s Spector suite of

products, Gerrie visited core shacks of both majors and juniors and asked geolo-gists to identify the most frustrating parts of their work flow. The biggest complaint was that they felt like “overpriced data entry clerks,” he says.

“Our focus is to eliminate a lot of those repetitive mundane tasks and let the geol-ogists spend more time on geology,” he says. “If you can reduce a geologist’s data

entry workload by 50%, he or she would have way more time to spend on inter-preting data. We want them to be using their brains interpreting and consuming data, not entering data which they barely have time to interpret.”

Instead of taking core photos and manually entering data (core depth, rock type, etc.) separately into another data-base, both tasks are done at the same time with classifications superimposed directly on the images with Spector Geo. The program also automates depth ref-erencing – another time-consuming task that geologists normally do manually.

By integrating the images and data, and streamlining the process, Kore estimates its Spector suite of products reduces data entry time for geologists by 90%.

“We can now present them with an image – they just click on the rock and click on the legend and it’s classified. They don’t have to type in depths – all the images are depth referenced so if you touch the rock image, it will tell you what depth it is downhole.”

The data is uploaded to the Cloud and available in real time, anywhere in the world, facilitating collaboration and remote work – an attractive option during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The system also speeds and automates the process of RQD logging, where a geol-ogist assesses the competence of the rock from a rock mechanics perspective, and references it to the core image. The Spector Geo system makes the RQD calculation over top of the image – so it’s possible to go back to the image later and see where all the interpretations and calculations were

Kore GeoSystems’ Spector Optics unit. CREDIT: KORE GEOSYSTEMS



https://www.srk.com/



CYBERSECURITY

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The cyber world was already becoming an increasingly dangerous place before the current epidemic, and we are now seeing the immense scalability of our cyber

adversaries. They have ramped up their efforts to target sen-sitive data and critical infrastructure (mining included) to dis-rupt economies and steal intellectual property. And at the same time, cybercriminals – fuelled by a desire for profit and bragging rights – have also launched ever-more sophisticated attacks on businesses and governments, many of which generate high-pro-file headlines while further lining the pockets of cybercriminal organizations.

And the current pandemic has raised the stakes even fur-ther. Remote work has surged, putting pressure on IT teams as cybercriminals target an expanded attack surface and novice remote workers, increasing the risk that a COVID-19 related phishing email or unpatched solution on a home laptop could open the door to a serious data breach.

But even when the COVID-19 cyber threat subsides, the attack surface for businesses will continue to expand. The rise of

Internet of Things (IoT), cloud applications and platforms, and the ongoing convergence of operational and information tech-nology (OT/IT) are not only introducing new efficiencies and paving the way for digital innovation. They have also opened up a host of new attack vectors that cybercriminals will continue to be all too willing to exploit – in part because, unfortunately, far too many organizations are failing to adequately secure them.

And these are just the “known knowns” – the risks that we are already aware of. By now, most companies are aware of most of the garden-variety cyberattacks that can affect their core net-works. While some can be quite serious, many others are little more than a nuisance that can be stopped with the right effort and technology. But the potential havoc those same attacks can have on the newly extended network, including the growing web of interconnected devices running ever-faster networks, is much higher. In those circumstances, these threats can have far more serious implications for business uptime and the ability for organizations to adequately serve their customers. And if there

By Graham Bushkes

4 WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR RISK IN A DANGEROUS CYBER WORLD



is one thing we can count on in today’s rapidly evolving cyber environment – it is that as we continue to innovate, so too do our attackers.

It should come as no surprise, then, that 84% of chief infor-mation security officers feel that the risk of cyberattacks will continue to escalate for the foreseeable future, according to research by Forbes Insights in association with Fortinet. More worrisome, 21% of them also believe that cybercriminals possess abilities that are outpacing their own organization’s ability to defend itself.

Switching the oddsClearly, these threats aren’t going away anytime soon. That’s why it’s critical for organizations to step up their game when it comes to playing defense. Most organizations fail to real-ize that with the superior resources they have available, they can actually switch the odds in their favour. Cybercriminals are coin-operated, and if it simply becomes too expensive and time-consuming to take down a target, they will move on. It all comes down to three things: making sure your employees are trained and ready to do their part; structuring networks in a way that minimizes risk; and eliminating the holes that inevitably open up when rapidly building out new network environments while relying on a patchwork of aging security solutions that aren’t equipped to interoperate with today’s dynamic networks or meet today’s evolving threats.

1THE SIMPLE THINGS MATTER

To achieve the upper hand in this raging cyberwar, there are four essential steps every mining company should take to

prepare for any cyberattack in order to protect their digital assets.The simple things matter now more than ever. In a world

where remote work is now the norm, to maintain security it’s critical that employees understand and follow all existing poli-cies and procedures. Remind them that things like virtual pri-vate networks (VPNs) and multifactor authentication (MFA), for example, are crucial to keeping the company safe and pro-tecting their electronic devices. At the same time, a good patch management system combined with application control capa-bilities are critical, especially now as so many devices are roam-ing outside normal organization safeguards.

It’s also worth remembering that email is far and away the big-gest weak spot in any organization. The impact of a worker who opens a well-worded but malicious email attachment is hard to overestimate. Which is a reminder that if you haven’t already done so, make sure to fortify or upgrade your secure email gate-way solution. But don’t leave cybersecurity in the hands of IT alone. Also train your people to be cautious. Everyone has a role to play – and cultivating a culture that practices good cyber hygiene is important.

For that reason, get in the habit of sending communications to employees reminding them about basic cyber-hygiene best practices, and updating them on the latest threats or social engi-neering scams that may appear in their inboxes along with what to do if they see one.

2SEGMENT THE NETWORK

When it comes to security, “open concept seating” built around inherent trust and flat networks that enable free

access to networked resources are not a good thing. Instead, critical assets should be divided into well-protected domains, or segmented to ensure that devices, assets, and data that are constantly moving into and out of the network are dynami-cally allocated to the appropriate segment and even very specific based on policy and a need-to-use basis. This helps lower the potential impact of an attack, ensuring that compromised sys-tems will be automatically limited to a certain security zone. It can also help to better wall off sensitive customer and intellec-tual property data.

This is especially critical in environments where OT and IT overlap. OT networks should implement segmentation and zero-trust network access to ensure that newly connected IoT devices and IT-enabled devices and services are automatically isolated from sensitive OT devices, and that management and communications protocols are isolated from device and user interfaces by default. Strict access controls, role-based access, and only providing the minimum amount of privilege and access required for a device or user to do their job, all combined with strict monitoring, ensure that rogue devices and malicious mal-ware and users have no ability to disrupt the business or destroy or steal critical resources.

3AIM FOR COMMUNICATION REDUNDANCY

Miners are very familiar with the risk and opportunity that comes with equipping and serving highly con-

nected, remote teams. For this reason, the networks that sup-port remote mining teams are at especially high risk in the event of an attack. Ensure that failover plans are in place to ensure smooth and consistent communications in the event of sudden failure.

Also consider a modern Secure Software Defined WAN (SD-WAN) solution to make it possible for organizations to change communication paths on-the-fly based on a variety of factors, such as sudden bandwidth constraints or dropped pack-

CYBERSECURITY

For better or worse, the current situation is revealing

to organizations where they stand from a cybersecurity

perspective. Those who have failed to keep pace with cyber threats are well advised to act

now. It was risky to wait this long. Delaying much further

could have dire consequences.

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ets. This way, the risk of losing the ability to transmit informa-tion, even in the wake of an attack, is low.

4SEEK AUTOMATION

At a time when we most need skilled cyber defenders, they’re in increasingly short supply. Canada is facing a

critical cybersecurity skills shortage, with a best estimate of at least 8,000 jobs expected to be unfilled by the end of the year. Between this lack of security talent afflicting Canada and an aging mining workforce, skilled cybersecurity professionals are hard to find. Even those who are now on the job are finding themselves having to juggle the impact of COVID-19, leav-ing even less bandwidth to handle the unexpected or engage in higher order strategies to identify and close any existing security gaps created by the recent rapid transition to a remote workforce.

One way to address this challenge is to take advantage of the artificial intelligence and machine learning being built into many security solutions. With it, companies can better defend against cyber threats, enabling them to analyze, spot, and address security issues and cyber events designed to evade detection far faster than traditional manual methods. Even bet-ter, AI can also study attacks and watch for patterns, which help users predict future attacks and enable their organizations to erect better defenses.

For years, many organizations have continued to rely on the same failed strategies or outdated technologies to secure their networked environments, even in the midst of rapid and expan-sive digital innovation that is transforming every other element of their networks. The risks of continuing down this path of continued reliance on increasingly less effective security solu-tions and strategies are higher than ever.

For better or worse, the current situation is revealing to organizations where they stand from a cybersecurity perspec-tive. Those who have failed to keep pace with cyber threats are well advised to act now. It was risky to wait this long. Delaying much further could have dire consequences. CMJ– Graham Bushkes is country manager for Fortinet Canada.

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Q&A

Canadian Mining Journal: What are some of the issues that Illumiti has seen affecting mining customers so far during the pandemic?

Lorraine Howell: Different countries and regions have handled

the pandemic differently – some are trying to keep the lights on and to keep people at work; others are taking more drastic measures and have shut down mining activities. P

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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are the central nervous systems of most businesses, helping companies with financial management, supply chain management, asset tracking, HR and more. One of the biggest ERP providers is SAP, and Illumiti, a consulting company and system integrator that mostly focuses on SAP software, has helped many majors and mid-tiers implement the platform.

Lorraine Howell, Illumiti’s vice-president of Innovation and Continuous Improvement spoke with CMJ in April about how miners can use their ERPs to cope with some of the challenges that have come with the COVID-19 pandemic, and over the longer-term, to facilitate their digital transformation plans. Howell also speaks about some of the advantages of S/4HANA, SAP’s new platform introduced in 2015.

Is your ERP ready

for the new normal?

How the pandemic could accelerate mining’s

digital transformation

Most of our customers are trying to keep the lights on, but they have certain constraints around travel – for example, we have fly-in mine sites in remote places like Canada’s North. With travel now restricted, they’ve had to lengthen the time that people stay on site so as to minimize their interaction with other people, then have them offsite for a longer period of time so they can self-isolate. So, travel to and from mines has been restricted, even in places where it’s not remote. In those cases, they’ve had to reduce their crew sizes, so productivity has declined as well.



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At corporate offices, people are finding working from home to be quite disruptive, so that has been an adjustment.

On a broader level, there’s a lot of supply chain insecurity – not knowing whether they’re going to get all the spare parts they need in order to operate their mines because some of their suppliers may not be seen as essential services.

CMJ: How are miners addressing some of these issues using their ERP platforms?

LH: Companies are having specific people, process and technology issues because of the pandemic. The people

issues are people that aren’t coping well with managing home and business in the same environment, or people that are actually getting sick. So, we’re trying to help our clients by just providing them bodies, or helping them with automation to address the fact that they may not have the same people capacity they had before.

Before the pandemic, we found that a lot of organizations don’t really use all of the capabilities in their ERP systems. Now, it’s even more important for them to start leveraging those capabilities to cope with all the issues that are coming up around people and processes.

For example, a lot of our clients are still issuing physical

cheques to their vendors. That’s a problem because you’ve got to touch the paper and put them into envelopes and mail them out, and the recipient might have virus concerns. Because of this, we’re offering companies a quick and easy way to move to EFT using their current ERP.

The other concern is the supply chain; people are concerned if their vendors are going to be able to continue supplying them. And what’s going to happen when suddenly everybody starts working again? Are we going to be oversupplied because we’ve let it slip for three, four, five weeks and suddenly we go back into business and we’ve got these minimum replenishment measurements on our inventory?

We’re suggesting to have a look at your materials requirement planning parameters within your ERP before we get to the next phase of this pandemic and make sure that you’ve set your reorder points to the right level so you don’t get overwhelmed by supplies once things get back into place.

Then there are short-term cost initiatives and ways of tracking expenses specifically related to COVID-19. Mines can also utilize the tools in SAP to better track the health of their employees and to record where they are in dealing with the virus.

Probably the biggest thing is visibility to metrics (business measures and key performance indicators) that are essential to maintain their business continuity. These would be metrics they’ve been tracking over time. A lot of our customers download data into Excel and calculate those metrics in Excel spreadsheets instead of leveraging their ERP. But if they are

running S/4HANA, they can see all their data in real time and build new metrics that will help them check if their vendors are in good shape and if they are supplying on time, and also look at the health of their own customers.

CMJ: So there are ways companies can make better use of their ERP platforms during the pandemic. What sort of opportunities should they be looking at that will still be useful after the pandemic subsides?

LH: With our customers that have moved to S/4HANA, a lot of them didn’t really embrace the new capabilities

of the platform, such as embedded analytics and KPIs, they really just wanted to continue business as usual. But I think the pandemic has disrupted the apple cart – now it’s not good

Lorraine Howell


ADVERTORIAL

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Vehicles released the largest battery powered truck yet – the 50-tonne Z50. How was Artisan able to engineer a 50-tonne truck, completely battery powered with zero emissions, and productivity and utilization comparable to a diesel powered equivalent?

When we think back to the early stages of engineering BEVs for mining, there is one thing that makes Artisan Vehicles stand out when compared to other manufacturers, and that is their fundamentally different approach to electric vehicle engineering. As Oren Harari, a professor at the University of San Francisco said, “the electric light did not come from continuous improvement of candles” and this is an applicable analogy to explain how Artisan was able to achieve this success.

“Artisan products were designed to be battery powered from the ground up,” says Brian Huff. As VP of Technology at Artisan Vehicles, Huff is known throughout the industry as the go-to expert when it comes to battery technology in mining. He has dedicated his entire career to BEVs, starting with an MSc in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Davis.

According to Huff, some BEV products on the market right now are reconfigured diesel machines so they are not able to take advantage of all that battery and electric-drive technology have to offer. But when designing their products, Artisan discards as much as they can about conventional diesel engineering. “When you convert a diesel machine to battery-power you are tied to the frame of the existing machine – the system is so interdependent you can’t change the driveline or significantly increase the torque without redesigning the frame, so you

can’t capitalize on the potential benefits and efficiencies of battery power and electric-drive” says Huff.

“Artisan products are the only third-generation products on the market,” he explains further. “Which means that it’s not simply replacing the engine with a battery, inverter and motor (generation 1) or redesigning more of the drive train (generation 2) but rather the next iteration where we redesign the whole machine to be fully optimized for battery power and operation (generation 3).”

“These are truly battery machines where we haven’t had to design the machine around certain mechanisms that are only required in diesel products,” Huff says. “They don’t look the same inside.”

One of the key features of Artisan products that is included with the new Z50 50-tonne truck model is the self-swapping batteries, which a diesel conversion likely could not facilitate. “Self-swapping batteries are a core feature of Artisan products, and the ground-up machine design is essential for our vehicles to be able to do self-swapping,” says Huff.

The Artisan design needed to be fundamentally different to incorporate this feature. According to Huff, Artisan had to rethink the entire machine to incorporate self-swapping of the battery and to increase the performance while keeping the same machine size. They added stronger frames, stronger drivelines, new boom structures and innovative packaging to take advantage of all the possible benefits associated with battery technology and ensure the machine was competitive versus its diesel equivalent.

Despite the extensive research and engineering behind Artisan’s designs, there is still a misconception among mines that there is time wasted while self-swapping, especially during long hauls. But according to Huff this is not the case with Artisan trucks and loaders, and mines need to shift their perspective. Diesel

Bigger, and Fundamentally Better

ARTISAN

Z50

powered loading and hauling is so embedded into the industry’s understanding of the haul cycle that it is a challenge to consider the productivity and efficiencies gained by removing fueling stops and diesel costs. “We are adding these more frequent but quicker delays for battery swapping but removing the longer delays that we don’t even question anymore because they are built into our understanding of the diesel haul cycle” says Huff. “What we have found is that with such a short battery swap time, of 6 minutes, and faster haulage speeds, there is actually an increase in production.”

According to Huff the Z50 is able to achieve higher speeds when traveling uphill loaded compared to the same size class diesel machine and the overall time spent swapping batteries per shift in many instances is about equivalent to the machine refueling time per shift. And the productivity benefits will only increase as the battery fleet expands from a single truck, to multiple trucks, to trucks and loaders.

“[With the Z50] you can do a 13km haul with only 12 minutes spent on battery swapping and the productivity will be matched versus a diesel truck due to higher speeds,” explains Huff. And all of this is possible due to Artisan’s generation 3, ground-up approach to engineering.

The benefits of the Z50 are not only seen during long haul cycles though. Huff emphasizes that the Z50 is applicable for all applications and purposes, an opinion that the industry has been slow to accept. “The Z50, and Artisan vehicles in general, are great for new mines because you save capital on vents and you can develop faster because you don’t need to wait for new vent raises. But it’s also applicable for direct fleet replacement at existing mines – you can turn down ventilation, reduce heating costs in the winter, and there will be direct TCO savings,” says Huff.

There are certainly mines that should be first in line for Artisan’s BEVs – those that need to reduce their diesel emissions right now. With very little change to current operations, mines can phase out their diesel trucks and phase in BEV trucks and loaders, allowing customers to stay ahead of tightening regulations around diesel exposure and emissions. For other customers it could open up new mining areas for them, allowing them to mine more tonnes. “There’s additional benefits for sure at mines that are deeper for example brownfield expansion projects with ore bodies open at depth can now be accessed without significant ventilation investment, but we are TCO positive even without considering the ventilation savings.”

According to Huff, the upfront machine cost of a BEV can be higher than its diesel equivalent, but the perception that the TCO is higher for Artisan BEVs versus diesel is wrong. “We have been doing a lot of work in this area recently and collecting data from all our machines in the field,” says Huff. “We have found maintenance parts and consumable costs to be significantly lower than equivalent diesel machines, which is a real game changer.”

Artisan looks at batteries as a comparison to fuel costs. Huff explains, “this is a new way of looking at fuel if you don’t go for something like a Battery as a Service agreement and rather purchase your batteries with the machine, it’s like buying your fuel all at once.”

“Considering the analyses we have done, over the life of the machine, TCO is about 12% lower,” says Huff. “And this is only these direct costs, it excluded things like parts holding costs, fuel handling and disposal costs, ventilation reduction, any tax credits for GHG emissions, and the list goes on.”

The best is yet to come from Artisan, with an 18-tonne loader on the way to match with the Z50 and further optimize the load-haul cycle. “This will be the first release of the joint efforts from Sandvik and Artisan and will highlight the strengths of both companies,” says Huff. “The exciting thing about this new machine is that it will be a solution for the customers requiring a smaller 8-yard (typically 14 tonne) machine as well as the larger 18-tonne machine.”

With a matched loader, the productivity and utilization of a battery-powered load and haul fleet can improve dramatically as the engineering benefits in more potential applications. Huff says he can’t spill any more beans on the 18-tonne loader right now but hints, “let’s talk again at MINExpo.”

LEFT: Artisan Z50 50-tonne truck courtesy of Sandvik

Mining and Rock Technology

ABOVE: Artisan Z50 self-swapping battery in action

courtesy of Sandvik Mining and Rock Technology


enough to just keep the lights on, in fact the lights are going to go off if you don’t do something. Getting visibility to your data, deriving value from your data, being able to measure the right KPIs or business measures to make decisions and to act on those decisions immediately, are going to become more important.

Whether they’re on SAP ECC (an older, on-premise version of SAP) or SAP S/4HANA, one of the biggest opportunities to my mind would be automation.

There are really cool robotic process automation tools out there that work with SAP and some of them are even provided through the SAP platform, that enable users to record activities and then have the system generate a script that can be repeated. Then, if you integrate the intelligent machine learning capabilities into that robotic process automation, you get what we call intelligent RPA, which can actually learn from the way you do something and suggest ways of doing it better. You don’t necessarily have to upgrade to S/4HANA to leverage these tools.

Everybody’s afraid that machines and robots are going to take over our work, but that’s not the objective. The objective would be to automate manual and repetitive tasks that people are now doing, and to get people – specifically where they have limited capacity – to focus on more important things. So, the capacity of your business doesn’t necessarily have to deteriorate because your people capacity has. In fact, you can keep going and have your people focus on the critical parts of your business.

CMJ: Is that a tough sell for an industry where you still have companies that are sending physical cheques out?

LH: I think the pandemic is forcing people to adopt technology where they would have been reluctant to

before because they couldn’t create a business case for it. When you’re in a situation like we’re in today where people are saying, ‘Don’t send us a cheque because we don’t want the risk of catching this virus,’ you are forced into an adoption process. And people are also realizing that their workforce is changing – the older generation is retiring, and the new generation (millennials and Gen Z) that are looking for work, are not going to want to do some manual, repetitive job. If your competitor is automating and you’re not, you’re going to be left behind.

I think that miners are going to start adopting technology more and the pandemic is actually going to help them from that perspective because it’s going to be a necessity as opposed to a nice-to-have.

CMJ: You mentioned there are longer-term opportunities your ERP can help unlock, including automation. Are there other, similar opportunities companies should be looking at?

LH: Yes, automation is the easiest one because it really addresses capacity issues directly. But one of the obvious

ones is embedded analytics. Companies that are running ECC today still struggle with analytics. In a traditional SAP environment, you can run list reports pretty easily, but to measure your performance in a particular area, you would typically have to download to Excel and then do calculations in Excel, or get a programmer to build that calculation into a program that would then produce a metric that you could then use to measure your business and then act on.

With new technology and with the SAP S/4HANA system, all of your transactional data is immediately available. Some of the essential KPIs that you need – for example, inventory turnover, actual cash flow, supplier evaluation, etc. – are provided out of the box, and can be made readily available on a launchpad or dashboard. But you can also leverage tools within S/4 to generate those KPIs that are not provided through a drag-and-drop kind of environment. Then those KPIs can be displayed on the launchpad so that I can see that my inventory turnover has deteriorated over the last day or two or my cash flow has become critical, and can immediately from that insight act within the system to remedy the situation.

We call it “insight to action” – where as you drill into the problem, you can click on a transaction that will enable you to communicate with your inventory manager and share a screenshot of what you’re looking at. And from the inventory manager’s side, he or she could probably see the issue right away and then easily address it by resetting the order point, for example. So those embedded analytics and insight-to-action capabilities can address the pandemic KPIs you need today,

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and any kind of business measures that you need to keep your business efficient and competitive longer term.

CMJ: You spoke a little bit about the capabilities of ERP systems in general and of SAP and S/4HANA. What are the differences with S/4HANA– how is it better, what’s new?

LH: The most important thing I would highlight is embedded analytics and the insight to action in S/4HANA that I

described above – the ability to drill down and follow some process to solve a problem directly from the data. S/4HANA sits on an in-memory database that gives you access in real time to your data instead of having to bring that data into a data warehouse and then have to report on the data on a lagged basis. This is the one fundamental difference in S/4HANA. The other thing that comes with that is the built-in KPIs. SAP has built in a whole bunch of KPIs – things like inventory turnover, days sales outstanding (DSOs), contract renewals – that in the past, you would have had to run six reports or download to Excel to get.

Mining customers also need to think about what are the KPIs that are most valuable to them. Is SAP delivering them out of the box? Probably not always. But are they easy to create yourself?

The second major benefit of S/4HANA is the user experience – having a launchpad that presents tiles that enable you to see these business measures and be able to drill down from those business measures. When you come into the office in the morning and log into SAP, you have a dashboard of all these tiles that give you exactly the information you need to know to be able to solve any problems in your business. This new user interface has these KPIs directly available and is a one-place environment where you can also link into commodity prices from a website, for example. You can integrate non-SAP systems into that user experience as well.

Beyond that, in 2019, SAP released a number of machine learning and prediction algorithms and capabilities within the

ERP itself. These give people the ability to predict what goods receipts are going to come through by month’s end, which sales orders are going to be invoiced and paid by the end of month based on the historical trend, etc. There are so many things people wouldn’t have even thought of that are now available.

CMJ: SAP will end its maintenance of pre-HANA platforms in 2027 – what does that mean for miners?

LH: You need to plan your migration to SAP S/4HANA so you can get it done before then, although SAP may

change the date (they already did from 2025). You don’t want to get into a position where you lose your maintenance relationship with SAP because once that happens there are penalties you’ll have to pay if you want to do the migration at a later stage.

But you need to have a real reason for going to S/4 – it shouldn’t just be because you’re afraid of non-compliance. I strongly believe that every mining company, if they sat down and analyzed their business today and where they would like to see their business in five, 10 years, digital transformation would be part of their long-term goal. Your current ERP is not going to miraculously support digital transformation; S/4 is moving you from an old platform to a new platform that can enable you to use new technologies. CMJ

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MINE COSTING

By Sam Blakely and Scott Stebbins

Rules of thumb are often used in the mining

industry as methods of providing approximate answers for different portions of mining activities. But do these “rules” work? Are they outdated? To answer these ques-tions, we decided to focus on conveyor costs and the associated rules of thumb widely used in underground mining.

We intend to show how Sherpa for Underground Mines, a software tool available from CostMine, can be used to bolster confidence in items like de la Vergne’s rules of thumb (or to make determinations in more project-specific

problems) in a way not possible without Sherpa’s speed and engineering capabil-ities. We chose de la Vergne’s compila-tion of conveyor cost rules of thumb to assess using Sherpa for Underground Mines. The majority of these rules are echoed below:

1 An underground mine is more eco-nomically served by a belt conveyor than railcars or trucks when the daily

mine production exceeds 5,000 tons. (Source: Al Fernie)

2 As a rule, a belt conveyor operation is more economical than truck haulage if the conveying distance exceeds 1 km (3,280 ft.). (Source: Heinz Altoff)

3 The ton-mile cost of transport by belt conveyor may be as low as one-tenth the cost by haul truck. (Source: Robert Schmidt)

4 The installed capital cost of a long belt conveyor system to be put under-ground is approximately equal to the cost of driving the heading in which it is to be placed. (Source: Jack de la Vergne)

Evaluating rules of thumb using

conveyorcosts

CostMine analysts investigate 4 ‘rules’




rated into the values below.

When a con-veyor transports ore out of the mine, the mine-run is crushed before it’s loaded on the belt to minimize belt damage. The models used in this analysis replicate this procedure. Typically, mine-run ore is not crushed prior to truck transport, but is instead crushed after it is delivered to the mill. In both scenarios, the ore is crushed, but when a conveyor is specified for pri-mary transport, the costs of this process are often attributed to the mine costs. For truck transport, they are included in the mineral processing costs. To effectively compare conveyor and truck transport, the costs of purchasing, installing, and operating an underground crusher have been subtracted from the conveyor trans-port scenario values below.

RULE OF THUMB #1: Production rateTo begin, typical deposits and match-ing mining projects which utilize cut and fill, sublevel longhole and room and pil-lar stoping methods were constructed in Sherpa for Underground Mines at vari-ous production rates. In accordance with rule of thumb No. 1, conveying distances were set to 1 km. The results of this anal-ysis can be seen in Figure 1 and align with de la Vergne’s rule of thumb whereby a conveyor is economically advantageous as compared to rail or truck haulage when production rates exceed 5,000 t/d. The results of the sublevel longhole and room and pillar analyses showed similar over-all trends. Though, relative to the cut and fill Sherpa models, the spread in costs above 5,000 t/d was greater in the sub-level stoping analysis and narrower in the room and pillar analysis.

Figure 1: Cut and Fill Haul Method, Production Rates and LOM Costs

RULE OF THUMB #2: Economic transport distanceEvaluators, and the preceding analysis, have assumed that conveyor haulage is economically advantageous when com-pared to truck haulage when material is to be transported a distance of more than about 1 km (3,280 ft.). To verify this assumption, we’ve constructed a series of production scenarios which examine a room and pillar mine operating through a variety of production rates and pri-mary haul distances. For our work, only the deposit thickness (as opposed to the

Modelling AssumptionsOur modelling technique, and that of Sherpa for Underground Mines, consists of a whole-project cost approach. Costs associated with several tasks and pro-cesses not directly related to purchasing, operating, and maintaining the machines must also be considered to properly eval-uate economic decisions.

In the case where primary transport options are compared it must be remem-bered that ventilation requirements differ for each approach, as are the cross-sec-tional areas of the faces of each of the respective openings through which the machines transport the ore. Shop facili-ties, and the nature of the service vehicles, are more extensive for truck transport than for the conveyors. Every such fac-tor figures into the overall economics of each transport method and are incorpo-

Cut & Fill

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Daily Production Rate (ton per day)



deposit width or length) was varied to provide the different resource tonnages (and subsequent production rates). This minimized the impact of the haulage costs from the face to the crusher station on the overall project costs.

The results of this evaluation (Figures 2-6) indicate that haul length is indeeda primary factor when truck haulagecosts are compared to those of conveyortransport. Though, as indicated by rule ofthumb No. 1 and Figures 2-6, productionrates have an equally significant impact.As can be seen, above a certain produc-tion rate (somewhere near 5,000 t/d),overall project operating costs will be lesswhen a conveyor transports the ore, oncea specific haul distance is exceeded (in thescenarios which we examined). In each ofthe models with production rates greaterthan or equal to about 5,000 t/d, this dis-tance was somewhere between 1,830 and3,660 metres (6,000 and 12,000 ft.).

It is critical to note the minor variations from one data point to the next. The curves are typically neither smooth nor uniform. These variations represent a condition that manifests because of the finite availability of

MINE COSTING

SHERPA FOR UNDERGROUND MINES

CostMine offers several engineering-based mining cost estimating software tools and works continuously to improve these products. One such offering is Sherpa for Underground Mines, which is software that uses resource and mine production information to estimate labour, supplies and equipment requirements, which are in turn used to estimate the associated mine capital and operating costs. To do this, the application uses evaluator-supplied information to calculate over 800 engineering parameters. These parameters can be readily altered to more precisely reflect project conditions. In addition, help screens and a manual offer technical guidance for each parameter value.

One value of the Sherpa suite of software, which includes Sherpa for Underground Mines, is its ability to complete engineering-based mining cost estimates in a timely manner. This allows you to assess a multitude of what-if scenarios as you make planning, development or production decisions, a task not easily accomplished when time is of the essence or without such tools.

HARD ROCK MINER’S HANDBOOK

Another resource available to developers and professionals who must make such decisions are the precepts and rules of thumb found in literature, such as those in the well-known Hard Rock Miner’s Handbook, written by Jack de la Vergne (published by Stantec Consulting). These rules of thumb are the result of decades, if not centuries, of experience and are of great value to many. They give evaluators the opportunity to diligently draw upon the industry’s collective experience as they solve the problems of estimating costs.

1,000 t/d: Haul Distance vs. Operating CostsO

per

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Haul Distance (feet)

$70.00

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5,000 t/d: Haul Distance vs. Operating Costs

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Figure 4: 5,000 t/d, Haul Distance, Method and Opex

Figure 5: 10,000 t/d, Haul Distance, Method and OpexFigure 3: 2,500 t/d, Haul Distance, Method and Opex




machine sizes. Put simply, in some instances a (theoretical) 27.5-inch-wide conveyor may have provided maximum utilization at a specific production rate. But because such a conveyor belt width does not exist, a 30-inch-wide conveyor is selected instead, which provides more than enough capacity. As a consequence, this machine will then be slightly underutilized (and subsequently more expensive in terms of cost per ton), unless the production rate is changed.

Modelling of this type points out the benefits of more detailed analysis. The suite of available sizes for any type of machine is a series of finite options. The conveyor width that the application selected for the 1,000 t/d scenario may provide more capacity than necessary, which is reflected in a higher overall cost. Alternately, it might have selected a truck size in which an additional hauler would be necessary but not fully utilized, thereby increasing the overall project per-ton cost associated with a truck transport scenario.

RULE OF THUMB #3: Cost per ton-mileIt is said that conveyor transport costs are typically about 10% of those attributable to truck transport. This statement is vague in that it does not go on to define which costs are included, and if this relationship is applicable to any specific distance. Our analyses tend to dispute this relationship.

On average, over all the scenarios we examined, total per-ton-mile operating costs for conveyor haulage were about 39% of those for truck transport. These costs include the diesel (US$2.65 per gal-lon) or electricity (US$0.087 per kWh) to propel the truck or the belt, maintenance and repair parts and labour, tires and an operator for the truck, and lubricants. All

prices used in our analyses are in terms of 2020 U.S. dollars. If ownership costs are included, the total per-ton-mile operating costs for conveyor haulage aver-aged 72% of those for truck transport. For these anal-yses, ownership costs are simply the purchase price divided by the expected life of the machine prior to overhaul or replacement.

The lowest ratio of con-veyor transport operating

costs to truck transport operating costs (excluding ownership costs) was about 0.26:1 for a scenario in which 15,000 t/d are transported about 500 metres (1,650 ft.). This ratio did not vary much with respect to distance. For a similar scenario in which the material was transported 350 metres (11,400 ft.), the ratio of conveyor transport operating costs to truck trans-port operating costs (excluding ownership costs) was about 0.3:1. This ratio was as high as 1.19:1 for a case where only 1,000 t/d were transported 350 metres and own-ership costs were included.

RULE OF THUMB #4: Adit development and installed conveyor costsRule of thumb No. 4 tells us that the cost of purchasing and installing a long conveyor is roughly equal to the cost of developing the opening through which it will operate. But the term “long” is not defined. For consis-tency, the authors chose to investigate this rule of thumb using an adit length of 1 km (3,280 ft.).

The results of this analysis indicate that this rule of thumb primarily applies to proj-ects near in scale to 5,000 t/d ore produc-tion. At this rate, conveyor purchase and installation costs are roughly equal to the cost of driving an appropriately sized adit. However, at production rates below 5,000 t/d, the cost of the conveyor is near half the cost of driving the adit. Above 5,000 t/d, the scenario is just the opposite and the cost of developing an appropriate open-ing tends to be about half the installed cost of the conveyor. Cost differences do begin to narrow as the transport distance is increased; however, the cross over in costs (the point at which they are roughly equal) still seems to occur around 5,000 t/d.

ConclusionRules of thumb continue to be a viable source of information when evaluators estimate costs of proposed operations at their earliest stage. They bring a level of practical experience to the estimate that provides a tangible boost in confidence of the results, which is difficult to replicate. However, there are drawbacks. Such rules fail to account for variations in wages and the prices of fuel and electricity attributable to the passage of time and circumstance of location. And with the availability of more and more reliable sources of current (and continually updated) cost informa-tion in formats that can provide very timely results, the risks of relying entirely on rules of thumb are increasingly unjustified. CMJ

n Sam Blakely is a cost analyst and geologist with CostMine (www.costmine.com), a division of Glacier Resource Innovation Group. He can be reached at [email protected] Scott Stebbins, P.E., is president of Aventurine Mine Cost Engineering, and designed the Sherpa sotfware suite. He can be reached at [email protected].

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HEALTH & SAFETY

By Alisha Hiyate

In many jurisdictions around the world, mining has been classified as an essential service, allowing mines to

continue to operate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For a sector that takes safety extremely seriously, how are practices being amended to deal with this new reality and to protect employees and communities?

From transport of personnel to site, maintenance tasks that require more than one person, and meal times, miners have had to rethink every aspect of oper-ations to continue operating safely.

Some of their solutions – including physical distancing reminders in the form of marking out what 2 metres dis-tance looks like in areas where employees congregate – will be familiar to anyone who’s visited a grocery store lately.

Even in jurisdictions where mines have

Mining sector develops best practices for a COVID-19 world

been deemed “non-essential” businesses, operations must still maintain a mini-mum number of staff to maintain the site during care and maintenance. So physical distancing, new procedures around com-mon areas, crew changes, etc., still need to be thought through and applied, with guidance from various health authorities.

We asked miner Eldorado Gold and contractor Redpath Mining to share their experiences coping with the pan-demic in the multiple jurisdictions they operate within.

“We’ve utilized and followed guid-ance from Health Canada, the WHO, Centres for Disease Control and in some areas we’re relying on provincial and regional recommendations, and even in some cases local health units,” says Chris Betsill, manager of Health Safety and Environment with Redpath Mining.

Like others in the mining busi-ness, Redpath, a North Bay, Ont.-headquartered mining contractor works at sites around the world.

“I would say these sources of informa-tion refined our strategies and many of our clients also responded quite well and provided their guidance and controls to prevent or reduce the number of cases on their property.”

And that varies site by site and by client.“You’ve got remote sites where every-

one’s in a camp; we’ve also got projects that are located in a city where people go home back to their families, so each sce-nario poses different challenges.”

George Burns, president and CEO of Eldorado Gold, which has mines in Quebec, Turkey and Greece, says while the company has relied on guidance from multiple authorities, it’s been pretty



There’s a great deal of collaboration happening within the sector, and not just within Canada but internationally – the industry is sharing best practices and then each mining association in a particular jurisdiction is sharing what the industry is doing to reduce risk and helping governments make informed decisions.”– GEORGE BURNS, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF ELDORADO GOLD.


provide support while working from home.Since CMJ spoke with Eldorado in

early April, their operations situation has

continued to evolve: As of Apr. 15, the Quebec government is allowing mines to reopen with strict sanitation and physical distancing measures in place, as well as longer rotations for crews in fly-in oper-ations and a reduction of flights in and out of sites.

COVID-19 guidelinesWhere operations have been able to remain open, guidelines and controls specific to COVID-19 have had to be developed, both to protect employees, cli-ents, and communities, and to reduce the impact of the pandemic on the business. This has been aided by guidance from authorities, guidance from internal crisis management plans, and miners sharing best practices with each other directly and through local mining associations.

“There’s a great deal of collaboration happening within the sector, and not just within Canada but internationally – the industry is sharing best practices and then each mining association in a par-ticular jurisdiction is sharing what the industry is doing to reduce risk and help-ing governments make informed deci-sions,” says Eldorado’s Burns. “I’ve been impressed with the amount of sharing – and it’s not new for our industry when it comes to safety and health, there is no competition between companies. That industry norm is just continuing through this pandemic.”

For mining operations, the physical distancing guidelines of 2 metres sep-aration between people that have been

consistent on what measures need to be taken to stop the spread of the disease.

“The high-level guidance is fairly con-sistent,” Burns says. I think what’s differ-ent is how fast the virus is spreading in each jurisdiction and then what the gov-ernment determines is the appropriate action to be taken.”

Eldorado’s mines have been affected differently by the crisis. While its mines in Turkey and Greece are still in full pro-duction, its Lamaque underground mine in Quebec had to be transitioned to care and maintenance after the Quebec gov-ernment deemed mining a non-essential business in late March.

That transtion was achieved within 24 hours, with the number of workers onsite reduced from hundreds to 35 required for care and maintenance. Remote monitor-ing technology allowed management to

Far left: Disinfection at Eldorado Gold’s Efemcukuru gold mine in Turkey.Left: Physical distancing markers at Efemcukuru.Below: Practicing physical distancing during a meeting at Eldorado Gold’s Kisladag gold mine in Turkey CREDIT: ELDORADO GOLD



central to health authorities’ recommen-dations has provided some challenges.

At their offices, miners have been restricting non-essential travel and, since the pandemic started to spread more widely in March, employees who can work from home have been working remotely. Limiting the number of staff who come into the office, and in some cases, implementing one-way entrances and exits has also helped reduce risk where employees need to go in.

Companies are making use of relatively new technologies that were implemented pre-COVID-19 and now proving essen-tial to business – for example the use of video and teleconferencing capabilities, and remote monitoring.

“We have, like many companies been investing in technology over the last cou-ple of years, and in particular, our video teleconferencing capability has worked fabulously,” said Burns. “So we have all kinds of crisis teams that are managing safety, hygiene and business manage-ment, supply chains, customers – essen-tially where people can work remotely, we’re leveraging this technology and it’s working fabulously.”

At mine sites, stepped up sanitation, education around COVID-19 and health screening measures – including health questionnaires, and temperature screen-ing – have been put in place to reduce the risk of bringing the virus in.

Whenever employees are normally gathered together, procedures have been implemented to allow distancing have been put in place. For example Eldorado Gold is managing transport of employees

to its sites differently, says Joe Dick, the company’s chief operating officer.

“We don’t run any camp jobs, so we have transport. We have dispersed peo-ple so that we have physical distancing within transport. And in some locations, we’re doing a screening before you get on transport and in other locations, as you get off transport. Then, we also have deployed some staggered starts so that we don’t have those crowded areas at the beginning and end of shift.”

Dick says the company is also using personal protective equipment (PPE) – face shields – in transport.

“Most of our congregation points are in transport or at the start or end of shifts and through staggering and monitor-ing and screening, we’re doing quite well there.”

Dick says PPE is also being used for some maintenance tasks where two or more people are required to work closely.

“Then there are a couple of things that we discontinued until we figure them out, so in an underground application where we may be sanding steel sets or something like that where there’s close involvement between 2-3 workers at a

time,” he added.Entry into common eating areas at

Eldorado’s locations in Greece and Turkey, is managed with a certain amount of people allowed in at a time, and staggered. And like grocery stores, the company has placed markers on the floor as a reminder for employees to keep 2 metres apart.

Eldorado has also installed thermal scanners at its Lamaque mine in Quebec, to prevent workers with an elevated tem-perature from entering the facilities.

As Eldorado has implemented its plans, its also tried to verify that the controls that have been put in place are working and are practical, through task observation. Dick says task observation, which also helps to improve controls, is a best practice that will survive the current crisis.

“From my perspective, the concept of task observation to make sure that what you’re doing is effective, and seeing man-agement in the field observing is really good for the morale of the teams that are doing the work,” Dick says.

Underground considerationsRedpath specializes in underground mine contracting (construction and mining), where workers are often in close quarters.

The company has limited the number of workers in transport – whether it’s in cages, buckets or in light vehicles – and mandated the use of masks when physical distancing is not possible.

“Some examples would be riding cages down the shaft, bringing personnel into the mines in light vehicles – those are some specific situations that we’ve had where we’ve had to assess the risk and institute some unique controls to elimi-nate or reduce potential transmission of the virus,” says Betsill.

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HEALTH & SAFETY

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or transporting people, we’ve imple-mented certain sanitization procedures in between shifts, periodically throughout the shifts, and like a lot of others, we’re also relying on PPE – gloves and respira-tors and in some cases face shields.”

While Redpath’s projects are interna-tional, much of its staff is not necessarily locally based. With projects in Canada, the U.S., South America, Indonesia, Mongolia, Africa and Australia, the com-pany would normally have many employ-ees moving back and forth on their regular rotations, or on scheduled site visits.

That’s not happening now because of international travel restrictions – and that means that some Redpath employ-ees may be away from home until these restrictions ease.

“We’re quite grateful for all the loyal Redpath people who have decided to work extended rotations due to these travel restrictions and we also appreciate the sacrifice that their families are making during these uncertain times,” Betsill says.

PPE concernsBetsill says Redpath has been able to

transfer some PPE between projects in cases where one project has a surplus of materials. Redpath’s operations were able to donate 19,000 pairs of disposable gloves to the local North Bay Regional Health Centre at the end of March. But sourcing PPE at a time when it’s in extremely high demand is a concern.

“We’re working closely with our ven-dors and clients to source PPE to protect our workforce from the normal hazards inherent to our industry, as well as those related specifically to the COVID-19 cri-sis,” Betsill says. “As they should, front-line health care workers and emergency services are taking precedence for some specific equipment that we also require. In some cases, our suppliers of this equip-ment are focused strictly on health care and emergency services, which we sup-port 100%. So it’s something we’re trying to navigate now and I think that will be an issue for the next couple of months.”

While the company wouldn’t normally require the N95 masks that the health care sector might use, it is considering PPE similar to that because of the poten-tial to bring COVID-19 into a site and

the need to protect workers.In addition to PPE, other supplies –

consumables and machine parts – are also a concern in the medium term.

CommunicationThroughout the crisis, the importance of communication has become apparent.

“Communication – when you’re in a crisis – comes to a higher state of being,” said Eldorado’s Burns. “We’ve always been focused on safe behaviours and safety practices – not only at work but encouraging employees to take it (safety) home and have it become a habit at home. And I think with the virus, the same thing has happened.”

Burns adds that Eldorado employees have appreciated the company’s approach during the pandemic to reduce risk and at the same time, try to preserve the busi-ness and preserve their jobs.

“I think that’s highly appreciated by our workforce, and we’re trying hard to artic-ulate that reality to governments so that as they make their tough decisions, they can make an informed decision.” CMJ

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VENTILATION


Operators of underground mines must ensure that the subterra-nean working environment is

properly ventilated. Personnel should not be exposed to excessive levels of CO2, dust, humidity, temperature, toxic blast-ing and strata gases, and, chiefly, nitro-gen dioxide (NO2) emissions from diesel vehicles.

In addition to duty of care consid-erations, the cost of supplying fresh air to underground mines, taking spent or contaminated air out, and monitor-

Ventilation on demand (VoD)Ventilation on demand (VoD) systems employ sensors around the mine that transmit real-time data on key parame-ters such as vehicle use, personnel, and information from gas, flow, and tem-perature sensors to a central control sys-tem, enabling mine-wide control of fans and air regulators.

VoD systems learn and adapt over time with more data available, intelli-gently adjusting and optimizing air flow to maximize air quality and minimize consumption. In addition, potential problems are identified more quickly and blast gases are evacuated faster, decreas-ing downtime. By controlling mine ven-tilation in this way, annual energy savings

By Jan Nyqvist and Michel Serres

ABB installation at state-owned Codelco’s Chuquicamata underground copper mine, in Chile. CREDIT: ABB

ABB DISCUSSES THE BENEFITS OF VENTILATION ON DEMAND

ing and regulating air temperature in extreme environments means that ven-tilation systems are currently the larg-est consumers of power in underground mines, accounting for as much as 50% of energy use.

Diesel engines in vehicles and other equipment, for example, typically waste 60-70% of energy in the form of heat, and additional ventilation is required to clear continuous tail pipe emissions.

To mitigate these costs, ensure work-ers receive clean air where and when they need it, and manage constraints in hybrid mines that combine diesel and electric machinery, companies are turning to digital technologies that enable the sup-ply of ventilation to be brought in line with actual demand.

VoD can result in energy savings of up to 50%



of up to 50% are possible.ABB Ability Ventilation Optimizer

operates equipment according to actual demands dynamically calculated from mine production schedules and events, including event equipment status and location.

At ABB, we use a positional tracking system to identify where people and vehi-cles are in the mine, and their ventilation demands. Based on that, an algorithm calculates the optimal set points of the fans and these are then communicated to the fans, which are all connected to the central ABB Ability System 800xA. In addition, positional tracking, also known as location tracking, could be used with other technologies through the system.

Flow sensors feed back on the air flow in certain areas of the mine to ensure we have calculated the correct demand. For example, a gallery may have three machines in operation so we know the area requires 50 cubic metres of air per second. If the flow isn’t sufficient, the VoD optimizer recalculates and sends back new set points. It does this every 15 seconds, 24/7, monitoring ventilation entirely automatically.

ABB VoD solutionsTo ensure a ventilation solution that fits the operational and organizational demands of different clients, ABB Ability Ventilation Optimizer is config-ured in three implementation levels.

The first involves centralized super-vision and control from ABB Ability System 800xA Operator workplaces, meaning equipment can be remotely started and stopped from the control room, and scheduled, negating the need for personnel to venture hundreds of kilometers underground to start a fan.

Level two makes use of more informa-tion that is available. For example, track-ing on demand functionality allows us to assess the significant differences in venti-lation demands from electric and tradi-tional diesel vehicles – control is of major importance in a combined hybrid fleet.

We use that information to venti-late where clean air is needed and in the correct quantities. Subsequently, we can adjust the mine-wide ventilation system

based on the current air flow levels.Level three utilizes sensor feedback and

advanced multi-variable control technol-ogy to govern and optimize air flows and quality in the entire mine, while mini-mizing energy consumption in real time.

Level three involves fully automatic, closed loop ventilation. Algorithms cal-culate the optimal set points of the fans and the regulators depending on demand. The flow sensors then tell us how well we did, and we can update the algorithm depending on that initial measurement.

Boliden employed ABB Ability Ventilation Optimizer at its Garpenberg mine in Sweden; energy consumption by fans fell by approximately 900kW, which equates to a reduction of around 40%.

At Garpenberg, they have VoD level two up and running, and level three. We are also working with LKAB on its SUM project. They are putting a lot of effort

VENTILATION

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into transitioning to an electric fleet, autonomous driving and increasing pro-ductivity by 50%. LKAB has 1,000 fans underground, and so VoD is a major part of that transition from an energy point of view.

Managing constraints in hybrid minesIncreased electrification in mines, partic-ularly the transition to electric vehicles (EVs), will inevitably do away with many diesel machines, thus improving air qual-ity and the operational environment.

The next major ventilation challenge in underground mines will be around developing a hybrid solution to manage the existing diesel fleet and the additional electrical fleet, meaning you will not have the same constraints in terms of remov-ing CO2 and fine particles from diesel.

The air requirement in a mine is driven by the machinery and the personnel

Ventilation objects and functions – Minerals library



Left: Illustration of a ventilation on demand system.Below: A schematic of a VoD system. CREDIT: ABB


VoD systems learn and adapt over time with more data available, intelligently adjusting and optimizing air flow to maximize air quality and minimize consumption.

deployment, but also by local regulation. ABB works with regulators to ensure that the new requirements for people working underground will also be under-stood in terms of new digital and electric fleet technologies.

With fully electric mines yet to become a reality, in the interim operators will still need to deal with the efficient removal of blast and strata gases. In addition, as mines go ever deeper, cooling and refrig-eration become more of an issue, with some mines operating at temperatures of 35° Celsius.

There will potentially be a lot fewer people working in underground mines in the next couple of years, but operators will still need people there to perform

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maintenance – and to be able to do that, we will still need to deal with the ven-tilation requirements of both fixed and mobile assets in accordance with specifics local regulation.

We install temperature sensors on the ground and supply either more air or we cool it, depending on the mine area and the machines and personnel. Even if we transition to EVs or autonomous vehicles in the future, you still need to ventilate the mine efficiently and manage costs.

In this scenario, the control system for the fans becomes even more import-ant because you will need to adjust the ventilation to supply more air to those areas of the mine with diesel machinery to ensure healthy working conditions for the operators.

for fresh air in the mine.If you are looking to benchmark

through a comparison between a diesel and electric mine, then the ventilation requirement could be reduced by as much as 60-70%. CMJ– Jan Nyqvist is ABB product group manager, Digital and Automation Underground Mining and Michel Serres, is VP Innovation and Digital North America at ABB.

Reducing capexGoing electric can mean a premium of roughly 25-30% on mining equipment. Reducing ventilation costs therefore makes sound business sense as a way of offsetting these additional capex costs.

Using non-diesel equipment means less capex on ventilation, thanks to the relatively low-level requirements of EV equipment and less cooling requirements

ABB installation at Codelco’s Chuquicamata underground copper mine, in Chile. CREDIT: ABB



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made, providing an auditable trail.Like DGI GeoScience, Kore is focused

on extracting more value from data.The AI aspect of the Kore technology,

Spector AI further improves speed of log-ging, but also helps automate rock classi-fication.

As every project does rock classification differently, a model has to be trained spe-cifically for each project.

“At a new project as they start scanning the images of the rock, the geologists use the software to tag the images with rock types – that creates a training set for AI,” Gerrie says.

“Over time, when there are enough statistics, enough images to train an algo-

rithm, then it can start predicting and fur-ther save the geologist data entry time.” The geologist reviews and accepts and/or edits the AI predictions, thus remaining in control.

Kore has deployed Spector systems in Canada, the U.S., Chile and Australia, and successfully trained AI models to pre-dict a variety of rock type classifications and geotechnical attributes.

As for the speed of logging, a single geologist working with the system at one project was able to log up to 1,500 metres of core in a single day. While that was under ideal conditions, Gerrie says the system can routinely handle 800 to 1,000 metres of core per day.

The system is well suited to high vol-ume drill projects such as production mining or infill drilling.

“To train a model for predicting rock type, you need a certain amount of metres,” Gerrie says.

While about 70% of Kore’s clients so far have been majors, some junior miners have also signed up.

“It’s still quite valuable for small scale exploration – you have a permanent digi-tal record that can be accessed from any-where, you can enter data faster, you can collaborate remotely – and there’s still the ability to speed things up on the geotech-nical logging and to train for rock classifi-cation.” CMJ

FAST NEWS Updates from across the mining ecosytem

• SOFTWARE | RPMGlobal leads information exchange standard

RPMGlobal continues to play a role in the development of the International

Society of Automation (ISA-95) com-mittee’s latest Information Exchange Profile, which will pave the way for industry-specific integration scenarios for the mining sector.

The most recent ISA-95 committee meeting led to “Part 8 – Information Exchange Profiles” being officially accept-ed as part of the global ISA95 standard.

This follows 18 months of meetings to finalize the documentation and over three years of work to move the document from a conceptual phase to an approved exten-sion of a standard; RPMGlobal played a prominent role in this process.

According to Paul Beesley, RPMGlobal’s chief technology officer and member of the ISA-95 committee, this result “cemented the company’s position as a respected contributor and leader in mining enterprise integration.”

“Having the extension to the standard accepted creates significant value to min-

ing companies as it provides a blueprint for mining software vendors to work together to enable information to seamlessly move between systems,” he added. “This part of the standard will enable joint development of industry-specific integration scenarios which is especially useful when building off-the-shelf integration between mining technology vendors.”

The ISA is a professional body responsible for developing standards for

the instrumentation and automation of systems across industries with the ISA-95 standard adopted by key technology providers.

“The ISA-95 standard has helped unlock a standardized communication language for mining technology providers and RPMGlobal is proud to contribute to the progression of the standard for the benefit of everyone in the industry,” Beesley concluded. CMJ

AI TO THE RESCUE, CONTINUED FROM PAGE 18

RPMGlobal software. CREDIT: RPMGLOBAL

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13



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ON THE MOVEMAY 2020 | VOLUME 1 | I SSUE 4

Executive, Management and Board Changes in Canada’s Mining Sector

n TOP MOVES–pg 1 –

n MANAGEMENT CHANGES–pg 1 –

n BOARD ANNOUNCEMENTS–pg 2 –

TOP MOVES IN THIS ISSUE

Michael Holmes

Michael Holmes has been appoint-ed OceanaGold’s permanent pres-ident and CEO and a director of the company following Mick Wilkes’ resigna-tion. Holmes is a mining engineer with over 30 years of experience and joined the com-pany in 2012 as its COO. He was previously the general manager of Glencore’s Alumbrera mine in Argentina, where he was responsible for mining and processing oper-ations as well as for management of the feasibility study for the Agua Rica project.

Andrew Cormier

Andrew Cormier has been appointed to the COO role with Orla Mining, succeeding Hans Smit, who retired in December. Cormier is a metallurgical engineer with 27 years of experience and was most recently with Alamos Gold as VP of development and construction. Prior to that, he served as project manager at AuRico Gold, where he played a part in the development of the Young-Davidson mine.

Elaine Dorward-King has been appointed an independent director of Sibanye Stillwater. Dorward-King has over 30 years of leadership experience in the areas of sustainable development, safety, health and environmental strategy. She was most recently with Newmont as the company’s executive VP of sustainability and external relations and executive VP of ESG strategy.

Elaine Dorward-King


MANAGEMENT CHANGES

David Guerrero has been selected as the Argentine country manager for Alpha Lithium; Brad Nichol is now the company’s CEO and president. Darryl Jones has resigned as president and CEO but will remain on the company’s board.

J. Robert Logan has been appointed as an advisor to the board of Athabasca Minerals.

Ryan Smith has been appointed CFO of Bearing Lithium with Ray Baterina also named corporate secretary.

Robert Cinits has been appointed president, CEO and director of Blue Thunder Mining. Chad Williams, the company’s former CEO, is now executive chairman. Orin Baranowsky has also joined as CFO and corporate secretary, replacing Ryan Webster. Arv Gupta resigned as a director of the company.

Emma Oosthuizen has been named CEO of Buffalo

Coal. Oosthuizen has served as the company’s interim CEO for over a year.

Tim Thiessen is now the CFO and corporate secretary of Colorado Resources.

David Cross is now the CFO of Crystal Lake Mining with Brian Moore resigning as CFO and director.

Esteban Rivero Gonzalez has been appointed president, CEO and director of GFM Resources, following Jose Antonio Rivero Gonzalez’s resignation.

Gold X Mining has named Paul Matysek its CEO and chairman, succeeding Rich Munson who has been appointed president.

Scott Davis has joined Golden Predator as the company’s CFO, replacing Greg Hayes.

44 | CANADIAN MINING JOURNAL

Elif Lévesque has joined Guerrero Ventures as the company’s CFO.

Jeffrey Reeder has been appointed to IMC International Mining’s technical advisory board.

Michael Andrews has resigned from his post as president and COO with Japan Gold; John Carlile has also stepped down as a VP with the company. Andrews and Carlile will remain on the company’s board. John Proust, the chairman of the board, has assumed president and COO responsibilities. Rafaela Vartuli has also been appointed corporate communications manager.

Lori Price has been named CFO of Kaizen Discovery, replacing Greg Shenton.

David Lewis has been appointed exploration manager for Laurion Mineral Exploration’s Ishkoday project in Ontario.

Yari Nieken has been named CEO and chairman of Le Mare Gold; Nieken has been a director of the company since 2017. Bryson Goodwin has resigned as CEO but will remain president and a director of Le Mare.

Paul Carmel, chairman of Mason Graphite, has been appointed interim president and CEO.

Peter Mah has been appointed COO of McEwen Mining.

Rebecca Moriarty is now

CFO of Metallic Minerals.

Melinda Hsu has taken on the CFO role with Minco Capital, following Larry Tsang’s retirement.

Paul Dumas has stepped down from his position as executive VP finance and director with Osisko Metals; he will remain a consultant to the company.

Gunmin Park is now VP of corporate strategies with Pan Andean Minerals; Ted Dai has resigned as VP of corporate finance.

Martin Bajic has been appointed CFO and a director of Pinnacle North Gold following Emily Davis’ resignation.

Ian Russell stepped down from his post as VP of exploration with Solstice Gold but will continue as a consultant to the company.

Ken Ralfs has been appointed president and a director of True North Gems with Andrew Lee Smith stepping down as interim CEO and director.

James Fairbairn is now the CFO of Xander Resources.

MANAGEMENT CHANGES, continued from page 1

ACCELERATE YOUR CAREER: VISIThttps://www.northernminerjobs.com.

TO SEND YOUR MANAGEMENT, BOARD AND AWARD ANNOUNCEMENTS DIRECTLY TO US FOR INCLUSION IN THE NEXT NEWSLETTER, PLEASE EMAIL YOUR SUBMISSION TO [email protected]

BOARD ANNOUNCEMENTSKarim Nasr is now a non-

executive director of Altus Strategies. Nasr is the CEO of La Mancha Group, a private gold mining investment company with a portfolio of assets in West Africa.

Pascal Germain has been appointed a director of Fieldex Exploration with M. Donald Lacasse resigning from the board; Lacasse will remain the company’s CFO.

Peter Hemstead is now on the board of Fireweed Zinc following Richard Hajdukiewicz’s resignation.

Andrew Waller has joined the board of Glen Eagle Resources.

Christopher Ecclestone has resigned from the board of Global Energy Metals but will continue as an advisor to the company.

Rich Munson, Greg Barnes, Gordon Keep and David Laing have resigned from the board of Gold X Mining. Brian O’Neill has been appointed a director of the company; O’Neill is currently the VP of merchant banking at SAF Group, a structured credit and merchant banking firm.

Eric Zaunscherb is now on the board of GR Silver Mining with Darren Bahrey stepping down as a director.

Jim Greig has been appointed a director of Grizzly Discoveries.

Mary-Lynn Oke has joined the board of Anaconda Mining with Maruf Raza resigning as a director.

Peter Fairfield has joined the board of Aurcana.

David Laing has been appointed to the board of Blackrock Gold as an independent director with Alan Carter stepping down from the board.

Brian Fowler has resigned from the board of Blind Creek Resources.

Nick Demare is now on the board of Blue Sky Uranium.

Richard Williams has joined the board of Bunker Hill Mining as executive chairman; Williams is a director of Trevali Mining.

Diane Mann has joined the board of CAT Strategic Metals.

Joseph Ovsenek has joined the board of Central Timmins Exploration with Charles Gryba resigning as a director, president and CEO of the company. Gryba will continue as a technical consultant.

Matthew Carr has been named a director of Core Gold; Carr is currently an executive director of Titan Minerals and chairman of Andina Resources. Leonard Clough and Keith Piggott have resigned from the board.

Terence Ortslan has joined the board of Crystal Lake Mining as an independent director.

https://www.northernminerjobs.com



UNEARTHING TRENDS

By Jon Wojnicki

Assessing the next move to succeed beyond COVID-19

c. Hedging actions to lock in low energy costs, currency rates and in some cases collars or another form of hedging metal prices if required to avoid distress.

d. Proactively put themselves in play or file Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) to be prudent and keep control of what could rapidly become a downward spiralling situation.

3. Review portfolios: Identify assets that consume cash and management attention yet have limited long-term strategic value, and either sell or find the right partners to take them on. These could be exploration assets, but this also applies to prefea-sibility or feasibility projects that no longer fit the owner’s profile or infrastructure that could be sold with a lower cost of capital.

4. Align on how to deploy excess capital: For some fortunate miners – such as select gold producers – the combination of record high gold prices in most local currencies, all-time low oil costs and cheap borrowing costs may create debate between stakeholders on how to deploy excess capital or balance sheet capacity. Companies need to proactively establish a set of prior-ities and criteria for capital deployment that balances capital required, potential return and risk. Having a strong alignment across the business and stakeholders can reduce angst and lead to more strategic long-term decisions.

While these considerations may not be applied directly by every business, they’re a good touchstone to maintain perspective when regrouping or prioritizing activities. A sharp eye and an agile mindset will be essential to working through these and coming out on top on the other side of COVID-19. CMJ

JON WOJNICKI is a partner and Canadian co-leader of the EY-Parthenon practice of Ernst & Young LLP. He’s based in Toronto. For more insights, visit ey.com/en_ca/covid-19.

Veteran executives of Canadian mining and metals companies have seen many adversi-

ties through their careers, including extreme market volatility and long cyclical troughs. Together with global peers, they have also wit-nessed many healthcare (Ebola, H1N1), political (wars, organized crime) and weather crises.

The industry started off 2020 on a high note. Base metals visible inventories were trending down while prices were trending up. The electric vehicle revolution was accelerating, driving macro factors supportive for battery metals. Even capital markets were starting to show renewed interest in the sector. But the COVID-19 pandemic has radically changed the once promising outlook.

Despite the resiliency of this group, COVID-19 is causing a whole new playbook of operating and cashflow challenges – especially at a time when many balance sheets were already under strain.

After the initial burst of energy focused on compliance, employee health and safety, and stakeholder communication, mining companies are starting to shift to the “next” phase. Logical next steps for the executive team are outlined in the EY Rapid Value Assessment framework (exhibit one) to assess the current state, stress test the impact of several scenarios on vari-ous operations, adapt value levers to make necessary moves on the core business and reposition to emerge as a strong business.

Given the multitude of metal exposures and operating juris-dictions, there’s no single prescription for all Canadian execu-tives to follow. However, several actions have emerged through our discussions with mining and metals executives:1. Leverage government incentives: Understand what is available and worth taking. Get involved in discussions that are shaping programs directly affecting your business.

2. Take proactive actions on liquidity and debt: Develop clear scenarios for the duration of operational shutdown, metal prices, currencies and input costs to forecast cash levels and covenant compliance week-by-week to better determine the level of:

a. Management actions to take to reduce cash outflow (exploration, growth capex, working capital inventory lev-els, dividends and discretionary expenses).

b. Engagement of lenders in dialogue on covenant relief or refinancing and increasing working capital lines and con-sider creating or increasing stream financing.

https://www.ey.com/en_ca/covid-19

The Canadian Mining Journal is published 10x a year. We also provide a free Daily News service that is emailed four times a week. To subscribe to our magazine and/or receive the Daily News email, please visit canadianminingjournal.com and click on the big red “Newsletter” box on the upper right corner.

The Buyers Guide is published every November and is also available online via our website. You can register your company at any time. There is no charge to be listed. Just follow the prompts once you click on “Buyers Guide” from our index at canadianminingjournal.com.For any questions about subscribing or having your company listed on our Buyers’ Guide, please contact us at 416-510-6891 or 1-888-502-3456, ext. 2 or 43734. You can email the Publisher, Robert Seagraves, directly at [email protected].

ADVERTISERS INDEXAccutron Instruments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . accutroninstruments.com

Bag Supplies Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . bagsupplies.ca

DSI Underground . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . dsiunderground.com

Eriez Flotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . eriezflotation.com

GIW Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . giwminerals.com

Maestro Digital Mine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . maestrodigitalmine.com

Mecanicad Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . mecanicad.ca

Metso Minerals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . metso.com/tailingsmanagement

Multotec Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . multotec.ca

Pugmill Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . pugmillsystems.com

RAM Industries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ramindustries.com

Redpath Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . redpathmining.com

Sandvik Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24/25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . artisanvehicles.com/z50

Smithco Side Dump Trailers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sidedump.com/cmj

SMS Equipment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . smsequipment.com

SRK Consulting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . srk.com

T.D. Micronic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . tdmicronic.com

Titian Environmental . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . titanenviro.com

TopVu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . topvu.ca

Westpro Machinery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . westpromachinery.com


presented by

CONNECTLEARN

EVOLVE

northernminer.com/CMS2020

Register for free:

Join us June 16-18, 2020

presented by

A digiTAL miNiNg CONfERENCE fOR ExECuTiVEs, iNVEsTORs ANd ExpERTs

sEAN BoydVice-Chairman and CEOAgnico Eagle Mines Ltd

dON Lindsaypresident and CEOTeck Resources Ltd

JEffREy Christianmanaging partner

CPM Group

JOE Fosterportfolio manager and gold strategistVanEck

RANdy sMaLLWoodpresident and CEO

Wheaton Precious Metals

gORd stothartpresident and CEOIAMGOLD

List in the Canadian Mining Journal’s ProfessionalDirectory

COST AS LOW AS$250.00

PER ISSUE

CONTACT:

Robert Seagraves416-510-6891 Fax: [email protected]

DON’T MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY

TO GROW YOURBUSINESS IN 2020




http://accutroninstruments.com/

https://bagsupplies.ca/

https://www.dsiunderground.ca/

https://www.eriezflotation.com/

https://www.ksb.com/ksb-us/Products_and_Markets/Mining/

https://www.maestrodigitalmine.com/

https://mecanicad.ca

https://www.metso.com/industries/mining/tailings-management/

http://multotec.ca/

https://pugmillsystems.com/

https://www.ramindustries.com/

https://www.redpathmining.com/

https://www.artisanvehicles.com/z50/

https://www.sidedump.com/cmj

https://www.smsequipment.com/

https://www.srk.com/

https://www.tdmicronic.com/

https://hubs.ly/H0n18jf0

https://topvu.ca/

https://www.westpromachinery.com/

presented by

CONNECTLEARN

EVOLVE

northernminer.com/CMS2020

Register for free:

Join us June 16-18, 2020

presented by

A digiTAL miNiNg CONfERENCE fOR ExECuTiVEs, iNVEsTORs ANd ExpERTs

sEAN BoydVice-Chairman and CEOAgnico Eagle Mines Ltd

dON Lindsaypresident and CEOTeck Resources Ltd

JEffREy Christianmanaging partner

CPM Group

JOE Fosterportfolio manager and gold strategistVanEck

RANdy sMaLLWoodpresident and CEO

Wheaton Precious Metals

gORd stothartpresident and CEOIAMGOLD

http://www.northernminer.com/2020-canadian-mining-symposium/

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