Mining Transformation for Enduring Value

By Dr Guy Boggs

The Cooperative Research Centre for Transformations in Mining Economies, launched in 2020, is creating opportunities to bring Australian innovation in the emerging mine closure sector to the global market.

Australia’s resource wealth is well known, from the 19th century eastern and western gold rushes in places such as Ballarat and Kalgoorlie to the iron ore driven ‘mining boom’ of the 2000s. This mineral wealth has helped build our regions and cities, driven our society’s GDP, and enabled the investment in and development of other industries. Extracting this wealth from our mineral resources is a partnership between government, mining companies, and the community, requiring a fine-tuned set of skills, technologies, and business acumen to ensure profitable and sustainable sector. While the focus in the past has been on optimising the exploration, construction and operational phases of a mine’s life, it’s now becoming clear that it is just as critical that we ensure mines can close, be relinquished and transition communities, infrastructure and land for next use if we are to have a sustained resource sector. 

What is driving this transformation of the sector? 

While social licence has long been recognised as important, recent challenges have demonstrated that this is one of the most significant business risks mining companies face. Public confidence in the sector’s ability to minimise the net social and environmental impact and deliver enduring value by closing, relinquishing, and transitioning mines and their communities is critical, and central to social licence. What’s more, this is driving decision-making within the investment community and our ability to recruit the next generation into the sector. Transforming the sector to one that not only generates wealth during the operating life of a mine but also leaves a positive legacy will be critical in attracting and building the workforce of the future.

Australia has experienced a mining boom and it is inevitable that this will precede a spike in mine closures over coming decades. Meeting this future demand creates significant opportunity for innovation and an expanded view of how we conceptualise the mine closure supply and value chains. 

A new way of thinking 

While mine rehabilitation is not a new topic, it is one that has been underpinned by a shared belief that after a mine finishes, it will be returned to a state that closely resembles what was there before. This belief has underpinned our policy development, mine planning, and associated investment through the life of a mine, and is closely connected to the community’s social licence for the sector. This approach fails to recognise that as mines develop, they build infrastructure, create communities, and radically change the landscape. If we are to deviate from this ‘single path’, we will need a new way of thinking as well as the skills, knowledge, technology, business settings, and policy environment that will best enable a new vision of success in mine rehabilitation and closure. Our CRC has been developed to support and inform this new way of thinking. We are developing new tools that can integrate repurposing opportunities at individual sites and planning at regional scales to deliver net benefits beyond the mine for towns and broader regions in transition. We recognise that this requires the mining industry to connect with sectors driving post-mine development, from conservation to tourism, agriculture, and energy, as well as consider the critical role First Nations people play in land stewardship. As such, we are working with stakeholders to define a new vision of success in mine closure and post-mine transitions. Without a new, shared understanding of success, we will continue to see missed opportunities and conflict that will undermine the sector.

Australia is incredibly fortunate to have an environment in which diverse stakeholders can explore solutions together, and the Australian Governments Cooperative Research Centre Program can enable this. Of course, a new definition of success has significant implications for how we plan, execute, and regulate mines.

The CRC is working with our partners to develop new decision-making measures that incorporate considerations of time (short- and long-term), tangibility, and opportunity in decision-making. This will increase confidence in our ability to forecast and predict residual risk and make decisions throughout the life of a mine to position it for a positive post-mine transition. The consideration of mine closure through a whole-of-government lens is important, and we are fortunate to be working with policy makers from multiple government portfolios and national jurisdictions to develop new frameworks and standards that can enable these transitions. 

The final piece of the puzzle is driving technological innovation to ensure we have capability to execute these visions. Our CRC will invest in innovation that directly addresses the key areas of risk and opportunity identified through new decision tools and recognition of post-mine regional perspectives. This requires integration of water, landform, and ecosystem design tools, delivery mechanisms that are cost-effective, scaleable, and fit-for-purpose, and the use of remote monitoring technologies that identify progress and inform future trajectories. With a mine closure ‘boom’ forecast over coming decades, the CRC platform will enable piloting and commercialisation of these technologies and ensure Australia‘s Mining Equipment, Technology, and Services (METS) supply chains are ready to meet domestic needs and positioned to capitalise on an emerging global market place. Change in the sector driven through advancements in technology, greater transparency, and rise in the importance of ESG and social licence expectation needs to be met with a new way of thinking. This is an exciting challenge and opportunity for the sector and one that our 77 partners are coming together to solve.

Dr Guy Boggs is the CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre for Transformations in Mining Economies (CRC TiME). Guy is committed to enabling a new vision for mine closure and positive post mine transitions through effective stakeholder engagement, research planning and innovative solutions. He has extensive experience providing leadership in innovation, actively working at the interface of industry and research.

Video - What is mine rehabilitation?