Base Metals Cut-Off Grade Strategy case study

AMC’s Hill of Value® process helps Canadian Base Metals miner unlock near-term mining opportunities and more than US$1.0B in value by adopting a new cut-off grade strategy.

AMC’s Hill of Value® process and approach to full system optimization has significantly supported our client's operations by helping them achieve a more dynamic and flexible cut-off grade application to mine near-term opportunities and contingency production. This has helped them close the current performance gap through a more robust Life of Mine (LOM) strategy.

Project facts

Operations:

Base Metals

Location:

Canada

Commodities:

Nickel and Copper

Since 2021, AMC has provided ongoing support to our client's base metals operations through performance diagnostics to identify key bottlenecks and opportunities, as well as in-depth strategic planning through full system optimization.

The Challenge

Our client's Canadian base metals operations are some of the oldest and deepest underground open stoping operations globally.

Highly seismic mining conditions, ageing underground infrastructure, and slow development rates have led to:

A drop in overall production.
Excess system capacity.
Increase in mine operating costs over the last 20 years.

The application of break-even style cut-off grades resulted in increasing cut-off grades in each of the mines as operating costs continued to increase with depth, with potential near-term opportunities and potentially value-adding inventories being left unmined. Planned LOM productivity rates were also materially higher than current performance, which required a robust strategy to fill the performance gap.

Our Approach

AMC's more dynamic and flexible cut-off grade strategy ensures that near-term opportunities that had been left unmined in the upper mining areas could be included in the LOM plans.

A lower cut-off grade at the higher-grade operations in the short-term will allow greater operational flexibility in the LOM plan process to include near-term opportunities and contingency production when spare mining capacity is available without eroding value.

Raising the cut-off in the long-term across all the mines when operating at full system capacity and steady-state production ensures the highest grade material is being mined in future.

The Results

Significant upside:

Adopting an optimized cut-off grade strategy has the potential to unlock $0.7B cash over the next 5 years and more than $1.0B in NPV.
Potential to provide greater operational flexibility and stability to fill the performance gap without eroding value.

Cut-off grades is a key lever:

Moved away from break-even style cut-off grades calculations to a more flexible and dynamic cut-off grade strategy.
Reduced short term cut-off grades at the higher grades mines to access near-term opportunities and contingency production to fill spare system capacity.
Increased cut-off grades long-term across all mines to ensure highest grade material is being mined when system capacity is full.