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Mining Education and Innovation

NEWS RELEASE: Ionic Engineering: ‘Innovation is Alive and Well in Sudbury Mining Industry’

www.ionic-eng.com

Stephan Matusch, P.Eng, MBA is President & CEO – Ionic Engineering Group of Companies.

There has been some recent discussion in the local media that Sudbury, Sudbury companies, and the local mining industry in particular are not very open to innovation. As a mechanical/electrical engineer who has built my entire career, and a number of successful businesses entirely on the strength of our innovation – innovation that came out of Sudbury and Northern Ontario, and innovation that was completed with the assistance and cooperation of the local mining industry–I think I am well qualified to object to this.

In the course of building my businesses, I have had the unique opportunity to travel to pretty much every corner of the world. I and our companies have worked for mining companies across the world. But we have also worked in many other industries associated with innovation, such as electronics, new energy, automotive and consumer goods. I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of a lot of innovative projects in a lot of companies and industries and so I very well understand what innovation is.

I would like to state, unequivocally, that Sudbury, and the businesses in Sudbury are highly innovative. But…. it’s important to understand what “innovation” means. Innovation runs across a spectrum. On one end, you have “bleeding edge” innovation. This includes self-driving cars, fusion reactors, vasimir plasma rockets, robo-surgeons and fully autonomous mining. This is “sexy” innovation. It’s very risky, expensive, and leads to great photo-ops with executives and politicians standing beside some very complex equipment that will likely never see light of day.

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Vale and Glencore not innovative enough: Penguin CEO – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – October 08, 2014)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Local mining tech company representative critical of local miners

Sudbury’s largest mining companies, Vale and Glencore, lack innovation, says the chairman of a local mining robotics and technology company.

“I do absolutely no work in this city. I wouldn’t want to, and I don’t need to,” said Greg Baiden, chairman and CEO of Penguin Automated Systems, a Naughton-based mining supply and services company that specializes in advanced robotics, data communications technologies and positioning systems. “I don’t do it because I don’t find the people in the mining companies here very innovative.”

Penguin Automated Systems has instead relied on work with mining companies in South Africa and South America to solve specific and complex problems with advanced technologies.

The company also has contracts with the United States’ State Department, and with NASA, to explore ways to mine in space. Baiden made the comments at the launch of the 2014 Greater Sudbury Vital Signs report Tuesday.

The report is an annual checkup on how the city is performing in a number of areas, including the economy, the environment, education, health and wellness, and housing.

This year, the report had a special section on mining innovation, and Baiden, along with other industry experts, was invited to speak on the topic in a panel discussion.

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Vital Signs touts mining innovation in Sudbury – by Ben Leeson (Sudbury Star – October 8, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Coinciding with the launch of a Vital Signs report that identified challenges for children and youth in Greater Sudbury, participants in a panel discussion suggested promoting the city as a centre for mining innovation as a means of employing and retaining young people.

Launched Tuesday, this year’s Vital Signs report found while overall local employment levels increased slightly between 2012 and 2013, the unemployment rate for those aged 15 to 24 was 13.5% — up 21.6% from 2008.

The poverty rate for children 17 years and younger increased between 2011 and 2012, according to the report, from 15.4% to 16%.

The overall poverty rate was also up slightly in 2012.

To mark the launch of this year’s report, the Sudbury Community Foundation hosted a panel discussion at the Willet Green Miller Centre focusing on the potential impacts of making Sudbury a centre for “mining intelligence,” or a “mining cluster,” as it was often called on Tuesday.

The panel was moderated by Dick DeStefano, executive director of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA), and composed of Brian Jones, vice-president of business innovation at the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI); Kirk Petroski, president of Symbioticware Inc.; Don Duval, CEO of the Northern Centre for Advanced Technology (NORCAT); and Greg Baiden, chair of Penguin Automated Systems Inc.

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Mine of the Future™ – people and technology working together – by Rio Tinto (September 28, 2014)

 

http://www.riotinto.com/default.aspx

Technology & Innovation

Technology is an increasingly important success factor in the mining and minerals industry. Improvements in technology can change the way that we look at mineral deposits, make our operations safer, help us manage costs and respond to environmental imperatives.

Rio Tinto’s Technology & Innovation (T&I) group focuses on creating sustainable value and competitive advantage by making improvements to the way we operate. T&I partners with the business and external partners to provide technical insights into how we run our operations and deliver our projects.

T&I employs approximately 700 people. To help us achieve our goals, we’re also working with some of the best minds in the world of academia, through partnerships with leading institutions such as the University of Sydney and Imperial College London.

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Money for mine researchers in Sudbury – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – September 27, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Two Sudbury research organizations received almost $900,000 in funding from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. on Friday for projects that will make mining safer for workers and more economically viable.

About $784,000 will go to the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation to help develop a mobile canopy system that will make it safer for workers to tunnel into ore bodies and will almost triple the rate at which they do it.

Another $100,000 was announced for a diesel emission reductions research project being conducted by the Canadian Mining Industry Research Organization (CAMIRO) to test filters to protect miners from diesel fumes underground.

The funding was announced by Premier Kathleen Wynne in the Vale Cavern at Science North. Wynne said the two projects will help create and retain as many as 500 jobs, and pave the way for new mining operations that will create many more jobs in the long term.

She made the announcement the day after convening a full cabinet meeting at the Willet Green Miller Centre and attending at $1,750-a-plate dinner to boost the coffers of the Ontario Liberal Fund.

Wynne also attended a Franco-Ontarian Day ceremony on Thursday and jogged early Friday morning in the fog along the Jim Gordon Boardwalk, leading a group of students from Laurentian University, many of them members of the Young Liberals Association.

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AUDIO: International miners tour ‘deep’ Sudbury mines – by Jenifer Norwell (CBC News Sudbury – September 19, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury

Delegates from mining companies around the world are touring mines in Sudbury Friday. They are in town as part of Deep Mining 2014, an international conference to talk about the future of underground mining—which continues to progress at deeper levels, previously considered “un-minable”.

Marty Hudyma is an assistant professor at Laurentian University and is one of the main organizers of the week’s events. “Sudbury and Ontario has some of the deepest mines in the world. Outside of South Africa, we are the deepest mines in the world,” he said.

“And when I talk about deep, I’m talking about two kilometres and three kilometres and deeper.”

CBC Sudbury’s Jenifer Norwell met up with him to talk more about what lies ahead for the industry in the northeast. There was also a focus on what comes next for the industry globally.

The conference brought together mining personnel, consultants and researchers from around the world to discuss and document their experiences in deep mining.

Ray Durrheim from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa was a guest speaker. He talked about improving safety in mines in his country with CBC Sudbury’s Jenifer Norwell.

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NEWS RELEASE: Canada needs to act now to hold onto its global mining leadership – Head of the Mining Association of Canada addresses the Vancouver Board of Trade

VANCOUVER, Sept. 11, 2014 /CNW/ – In a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade today, Pierre Gratton, President and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada, provided an overview of the past decade of mining development in Canada and the keys to maintaining Canada’s position as a global mining leader.

“Canada benefited tremendously from the past decade of rising commodity prices, seeing a 25 percent increase in the number of new mines, increased employment and rising government revenues. The opportunity is there for Canada to continue to responsibly develop its mining industry, and the jobs, business development and community investments that go along with it,” said Gratton. “Governments and individuals all play a part in deciding whether we seize those opportunities, or let other countries take the leadership position instead.”

In his address, Gratton pointed to a few indicators to demonstrate how mining has contributed to Canada’s prosperity over the past decade, but also some signs of lost ground. Last year, after an eight-year period as the top jurisdiction for global exploration spending, Canada fell to the second spot behind Australia. Similarly, in the Fraser Institute’s latest annual survey, traditionally top Canadian jurisdictions lost their footings. For example, Quebec, which held first place from 2007 to 2009, fell to the 21st spot in 2013. In terms of mineral production, Canada has also declined from being the top five producer of 14 major minerals and metals in 2007 to just 10 today.

To explain these declines, Gratton notes that Canada’s mining sector operates in a much more competitive global environment. Some basic business fundamentals make Canada an expensive place to build new mines. This includes rising energy and operating costs, skills shortages, a lack of critical infrastructure to build new mines in increasingly remote and northern regions, high transportation costs to get goods to market, and complex and lengthy regulatory processes.

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Today’s U.S. ’baby’ will consume 3 Mlbs metals and minerals in lifetime – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – September 1, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

The projected lifetime consumption of metals and minerals by today’s U.S. baby extrapolated across the world presents an enormous challenge for the global resource sector.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – That seemingly unstoppable Juggernaut of consumption, the USA, ever continues to increase its demand for metals and minerals – an annual growth rate in likely demand that is certainly being exceeded in developing nations as they aspire to an ever improving lifestyle.

This will put increasing pressures on the global resource industries to keep up with demand as economic mineral deposits are perhaps becoming ever scarcer, although extraction technologies are almost certainly improving.

On this subject, the Minerals Education Coalition (MEC) of the Society for Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, the U.S.’s professional body for mining engineers, metallurgists and exploration geologists (SME) has thus just released the 2014 “Minerals Baby” graphic. Each year, the amount of metals, minerals and energy fuels needed for the average American is incorporated into this iconic graphic. This year’s statistics reflect an increase of more than 24,000 lbs during a lifetime when compared with the previous year’s per capita usage.

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Will the mine of the future be a mine at all? – by W.Scott Dunbar (Globe and Mail – August 18, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

The Globe and Mail has sought out columns from thought leaders in Western Canada, people whose influence is shaping debate, but whose names may not be widely recognized. Scott Dunbar is the head of the Department of Mining Engineering at the University of British Columbia.

Metals to support our way of life are extracted by mining and processing large quantities of rock. The basic extraction paradigm is “drill, blast, load, haul, dump, crush, grind, separate, process.” There are many variations, but fundamentally, the paradigm has not changed since ancient times.

Innovations have made operations in the paradigm safer, more efficient, automated and even autonomous. Rock containing very small quantities of metal can be economically mined and processed and it is tempting to think that further innovations will allow mining and processing of rock containing even smaller amounts of metal.

However, some constraints are having a significant effect on the feasibility of mining. First, economic metal deposits are very difficult to find. Some deposits exist at depths of one kilometre or more, but heat and rock-mass stability at these depths make their exploitation difficult. Also, the waste-rock dumps and tailings generated by mining and mineral processing pose significant engineering challenges, environmental concerns and financial liabilities.

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CEMI to cast a wide net for deep mining research – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – August 13, 2014)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Ultra Deep Mining Network has $46 M at disposal

The Sudbury-based Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) plans to launch a Canada-wide request for proposals by late September for projects that would fall under its $46-million Ultra Deep Mining Network.

In January 2014, CEMI received a $15-million grant from the federal government’s Business-led Networks of Centres of Excellence program to pursue research to make ultra-deep mining — deeper than 2.5 kilometres or roughly 8,000 feet — more efficient and productive.

As mines go deeper underground, technologies and processes that can improve costs and efficiencies can mean the difference between a profitable operation and one that goes out of business.

In January 2014, Samantha Espley, general manager of mines and mills technical services with Vale’s Ontario operations, said the company wants to reach three kilometres in depth, or nearly 10,000 feet, at Sudbury’s Creighton Mine within the next decade.

Creighton Mine is currently under its Phase 3 expansion, which includes the extension of the primary access ramp from 7,940 to 8,200 level and the creation of three main production levels to access additional ore bodies.

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First Nations youth mining camp expands – by Scott Larson (Saskatoon Star Phoenix – August 8, 2014)

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/index.html

When Reneya Lemaigre arrived last year at the inaugural Mining Matters Mining Rocks Earth Sciences Camp she didn’t know anyone and didn’t know what to expect.

But it didn’t take long for the teenager from Clearwater River Dene Nation to shrug off her fears and have a great time at Christopher Lake’s The Quest camp.

“The staff were really nice and comforted me,” Reneya said. “After the first day I was fine for the rest of the week.” “She started meeting new friends and when the day came for her to go home, she didn’t want to go,” added her mother, Rana Janvier.

The pair are once again making the six-hour drive this weekend from Clearwater River to Christopher Lake to attend the mining camp that will have about 30 teens attend this year.

The camp is put on with the sponsorship of six junior mining companies – Foran Mining Corp., Masuparia Gold Corp., NexGen Energy Inc., Alpha Exploration Inc., Fission Uranium Corp. and North Arrow Minerals – and PDAC Mining Matters. “The program is expanding,” said Barbara Green Parker, PDAC’s manager of Aboriginal Education and Outreach Programs.

They had 18 kids attend last year and expect about 30 this year – from Amisk (Denare Beach), Pelican Narrows, Buffalo Narrows, Clearwater River Dene Nation and Deschambault.

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Universities, colleges hammer out deal on what programs they can expand – by Louise Brown (Toronto Star – August 8, 2014)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Read previous column by Stan Sudol about why Ontario should merge all post-secondary mining education programs at Sudbury’s Laurentian University: http://bit.ly/1r597Q9

For the first time, Ontario has hammered out deals with each of its 44 colleges and universities that force them to bite the bullet and put in writing which 10 programs they consider their strongest, and which five — and only five — they hope to expand.

These Strategic Mandate Agreements, made public Thursday after months of closed-door haggling between institutions and Queen’s Park — “We need money for more PhDs”; “Let us expand our business program” — are a bid to end duplication and create a more specialized system.

They required the province’s fiercely independent campuses to answer a list of government questions, from how they plan to help more grads get work to how they nurture student entrepreneurs, how they will reach out to more aboriginal and disabled students, how easy they make it for students to switch schools.

As the first step to more differentiation, the agreements show the province will spread funding for grad students among a smaller group of universities than before, with the University of Toronto winning some 580 new spots, but many getting fewer than they had hoped and York University not being funded for more at all.

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Shrinking mining professional ranks may impact investors – HSBC – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – July 29, 2014)

 http://www.mineweb.com/

The dwindling ranks of geosciences professionals has impaired mining companies’ ability to quickly respond to surges in precious metals prices.

RENO (MINEWEB) – “A well-established feature of the precious metals market is the apparent inability for producers to raise production levels when demand and prices rise,” said HSBC analysts James Steel and Howard Wen.

“The paucity of trained professionals’ expertise helps explain—along with other factors—the weak supply response by producers to the surge in precious metals prices in 200-2012,” observed HSBC. “This is important to investors because it arguably contributed to the height and longevity of the precious metals rally; it also implies that future rallies are unlikely to be cut short by a rapid increase in mine output.”

An important component in our relatively positive long-term outlook for precious metals generally is the fact that demand exceeds supply in all four metals,” said the analysts, who suggest that lack of professional skilled and technical labor may be a key factor in the ability of mining companies to meet demand.

“If precious metals rallies are not be reversed by rapid increases in mine output, in part due to shortages of professional expertise, then prices may have to rise sufficiently to mobilize aboveground stocks, or deter demand,” they advised.

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Rio Tinto digs deeper for next big discovery – by Brett Winterford (IT News.com – June 23, 2014)

http://www.itnews.com.au/

A group of a dozen physicists and geologists from mining giant Rio Tinto and the University of Western Australia is two years away from commercial production of a tool that could dramatically expand the scope of mineral exploration in Australia.

VK1, a collaboration between the mining giant and the university, is an airborne gravity gradiometer that harnesses quantum physics, superconduction, liquid helium cryogenics and aerial survey data to solve the ultimate challenge facing iron ore miners: how can we see underground?

Australia has become a reasonably mature exploration environment, according to Stephen McIntosh, head of exploration at Rio Tinto.

“It is relatively well-explored in the exposed parts of the continent – areas that don’t have cover over the mineral deposit, or some form of material that is younger sitting on top of the mineral deposit.

“The dilemma for Australia is that somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of the continent is covered by something. You actually have to see through a veneer of something to explore underneath the surface – to a mineral deposit a few metres to hundreds of metres below your feet.”

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NEWS RELEASE: National Mining Centre: CEMI Building Relationship with Nordex Explosives Ltd.

KIRKLAND LAKE, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – June 10, 2014) – NORDEX EXPLOSIVES LTD. (“Nordex” or the “Corporation”) (TSX VENTURE:NXX) is pleased to announce it has been contacted by the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (“CEMI”) and has had initial discussions about exploring the potential to collaborate on strategically aligned innovative projects relative to current challenges in deep mining environments. In particular discussions focused on the innovative approach and successes Nordex has achieved with its Scorpion loader systems and its unique explosive formulations and technologies for development headings, production rounds and up-hole loading in underground mines.

CEMI is Canada’s leading source for underground mining innovation, located in Sudbury, Ontario and committed to collaborate with small to medium size enterprises whose ideas, products or services may add value and contribute to innovation in mining where industry knowledge, imagination and expertise exist to provide scientific advantages, new ideas and the know-how essential to turn ideas into workable solutions that can be implemented.

Nordex recently met with CEMI on its recent trip to the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum convention (“CIM”) in Vancouver, BC held during May 11 to 14, 2014. Upon review of Nordex and its line of exclusive explosive products and recent innovations CEMI initiated further discussions and exercised due diligence in visiting Nordex at its manufacturing facility near Kirkland Lake, Ontario.

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