Industries

Mining & Metals

• What are the major risks in the production process and how can they be managed?
• How could fluctuations of exchange rates impact the feasibility of a mining project?
• How do you choose the best hedging strategy against future changes in the price of your commodity?

Within the life-cycle of a mine management system, from pre-feasibility to decommissioning, a mining firm is exposed to a wide variety of technical, environmental, production, financial, business and market risks. Quantitative Risk analysis and management techniques can be used in many areas of mining including analyzing survey data, performing (financial) feasibility studies, developing a mining plan, production forecasting, as well as determining exchange rate risks and developing hedging strategies.

Clients

• De Beers Research, UK
• De Beers Mining Company, J'burg, SA
• Newmont Mining Corporation, USA

Example Projects

TRAINING IN QUANTITATIVE RISK ANALYSIS APPLIED TO MINING

Problem and solution

A leading mining technology consulting company wanted to start using risk analysis more in their project analyses, and set up a risk analysis department within their company to do this. They had many industry-specific questions, and were in particular interested in good ways to communicate the merits of the Quantitative Risk Analysis approach to decision makers.

OPTIMISING PRODUCTION GRADE OF ALUMINUM

Problem and solution

One of the largest aluminum manufacturers in the world needed a method to determine the blend of pots of molten aluminum with varying levels of contaminants that would maintain the highest quality of the final product and therefore the highest revenue. Vose Risk Consulting developed an optimizing algorithm to run continuously at their plants using data on the contaminant levels of each pot (including sampling errors) during a production run to find the combination that maximized the value of the final product.