The global mining industry faces a new challenge in 2024: to maintain its position while addressing the risks associated with sourcing minerals and metals to meet the demand for technology products and the need for sustainability.
According to the “Top 10 business risks and opportunities for mining and metals in 2024” report by EY, the top three challenges the mining industry will face are:
Increased pressure for sustainable practices and reduced environmental impact.
The need to finance the expansions required to meet the growing demand for minerals essential to the energy transition.
The acceleration of digital transformation and the need to adequately address cyber risks.
According to Paul Mitchell, Global Mining &Metals Leader at EY, to overcome these challenges mining companies will need to be innovative and adapt to change, which will include the use of cutting-edge technologies, digitization, and collaborative working.
However, the challenge of sustainability is not the only difficult task facing the mining industry. Another important challenge is the constant improvement of cathode quality, and this is achieved by involving technology and innovation to improve data management and analysis of all process variables. The ability to obtain and analyze data is fundamental to achieving improvements, and technology will be key to achieving this.
In this regard, we talked to Susanna Vergara Contreras, Senior Engineer, Plant Planning and Marketing, Gabriela Mistral Division, Codelco.
“One of the main objectives is to increase data capture of more process variables, more equipment and strengthen the database, with this, we will implement data analysis with advanced analytics that will lead us to determine the main factors that influence the improvement of the process and cathode quality”.
Likewise, Codelco’s Gabriela Mistral division is today one of the mining companies that is pioneering the digitalization of controls that were previously manual with projects such as Antara. In line with this, Susanna Vergara adds:
It is essential to strengthen data collection to go one step further toward data analysis applied to mining processes and to be able to face the challenges that arise. In this sense, openness to suppliers is fundamental, since they are the ones who bring us ideas and solutions that we can evaluate in our operations.
These are just some of the issues that the mining industry must address in 2024, where innovation and adaptability will be the keys to improving productivity and profitability.
