BHP chief executive officer Mike Henry has asked the mining industry to be more daring with its innovative technology if future supply demands are to be met amidst the green transition.
“Over the medium to long term, the mining industry has to get better at innovating and taking a bit more risk in deploying innovative technologies,” Henry told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week.
“That’s the sort of breakthrough that will allow us to unlock more of the existing resource or footprint more efficiently.”
Henry explained the importance of “smaller and lower grade” deposits “that are harder to find”, while highlighting that a declining production base would be a roadblock for the green transition if measures aren’t put in place to accelerate mineral exploration.
This is where technology is vital.
In fact, BHP has been proactive in exploring new technologies for its exploration practices, as the company’s chief technical officer Laura Tyler explained at a Melbourne Mining Club luncheon in December last year.
“There are some amazing new solutions in the technology and innovation and data space that are making this (exploration) process so much more efficient and less invasive,” she said.
“At BHP, we use mineral systems methodologies to identify the terrains we think are interesting, and then we can use a range of non-invasive land and airborne-sensing techniques that allow us to better understand the subsurface, both greenfield and brownfield.
“New technologies allow us to target drillholes much more effectively. And the additional detail we can see between drill holes allows more efficient mine planning through more accurate resource characterisation.”
All of this new technology is great and makes for a relatively easier exploration process, but even for majors, collaboration – and a certain level of humility – is vital.
“That means we have to embrace new ideas, new ways of working, different ways of thinking,” Tyler said. “Not always easy for a company the size of BHP.
“We have to acknowledge we don’t have all the answers.”
This has seen BHP invest in start-up companies such as Kobold and SensOre in Australia, and SRK and DeepIQ in Chile, which use artificial intelligence (AI) to enable the major miner to widen its search space and cover ground more efficiently.
BHP achieved record iron ore production of 146 million tonnes for the second half of 2022.
In the company’s half-year operational review, the major miner cited “strong supply chain performance, supported by the ongoing ramp-up at South Flank” for the uptick.
The record iron ore production was achieved despite the new South Flank mine not yet producing at full capacity.