http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/
This October 2017 article and the above video presentation from the Northern Mine Forum 2017, sponsored by the Northern Miner are well worth a read and view in light of the horrific tailings dam tragedy in Brazil.
It also should spur both the Ontario and federal governments, as well as the entire Canadian mining sector, to put significant funding into CEMI with a mandate to focus on innovative tailings and mine closure management.
Considering that the mining sector’s social license to operate is being challenged in many jurisdictions in Canada and around the world, a “Mining Marshall Plan” commitment to tailings management, acid mine drainage, mine closure, water quality and other environmental impacts throughout the mining cycle is paramount if the industry and government is truely committed to sustainable green practices for the 21st century! – Stan Sudol
InnovationQ&A with CEMI’s Doug Morrison
has been the hot topic of the mining industry for several years now – but how much progress have we actually made? CMJ spoke with Douglas Morrison, president and CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI), to find out.
Based in Sudbury, Ont., CEMI works with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that have or are working on technologies that could be applied to problems that the mining industry is facing. In this interview, Morrison discusses where the industry needs to go from here, CEMI’s work on practical solutions, and the “commercialization gap.”
CMJ: In recent years, the mining industry has been consumed with some big challenges – productivity, financial performance and social licence being some of the big ones – and the consensus has been that the industry needs to change and innovate to get to solutions. How much progress would you say has been made to date?
Douglas Morrison: I think that the industry is making some incremental progress – certainly on the productivity issues. They’re looking at the types of projects that will move the industry forward in relatively small steps at a time, so changing from diesel engines to battery driven equipment for example will have an impact, but it won’t be very large.
They’ve already gone through the exercise of cost-cutting and reducing expenditures internally, so that was their first step, and having done that, they’re now beginning to re-examine some of the incremental innovations that they could bring to bear. They have not been very strongly supportive of external innovation agencies like ourselves or others and so they’re beginning to reconsider what they should do there.
For the rest of this interview: http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/features/qa-cemis-doug-morrison/