Development of Economic Evaluation Methods of Coarse Ore Upgrading Opportunities including Integration of Cut-Off Grade Based Mining Strategies

Coarse ore upgrading opportunities, involving a mix of new and traditional technologies, are gaining momentum in the mining industry as a tool to improve the economics of resource extraction while lowering the energy and water footprint of the extraction process.Documented attempts to quantify the value of coarse ore upgrading opportunities have focused on the incremental change in processing costs of a static ore stream. In reality, the inclusion of a coarse ore upgrading step will inherently change the key value drivers of the mining operation. For example, with lower processing costs the cut-off grade (lowest grade that can be mined profitably) can be materially reduced, impacting the mine plan and the amount of deposit material classified as ore.This paper provides a framework to integrate cut-of grade based analysis into the evaluation of coarse ore upgrading opportunities from an economic perspective.