Don Smith has been working in the mining and mineral exploration industry for over 20 years. Starting his career as a geologist, he is now the Managing Director of Tempest Minerals. This wealth of experience and knowledge makes him uniquely suitable to unpeel some of the uncertainty away from the future, and point us towards some trends and lessons that the mining and mineral exploration industry might benefit from:
Lesson 1: Demand Is Up, Supply Is Down, Efficiency Is Key
According to Don, the key trend to look at is the macro-industrial trend of increased demand for rare earth and base minerals, such as copper, lithium, etc. Driven largely by the needs of the world economy, and particularly by an increase in electrification across the globe, demand is spiking and is expected to continue to rise. However, Don says, "As many people know, the grades of things like copper deposits are decreasing, and the number of discoveries we are making is also decreasing. We believe that matching that supply and demand curve requires a certain amount of digitization and technology."
In such a situation, what helps drive profitability the most, is improving efficiency in locating, identifying, and ultimately, extracting these minerals.
Lesson 2: The Largest Impact Of Digitization is in Reducing Inefficiencies
Because supply and demand are so mismatched, and are likely to stay mismatched, any improvement in efficiency provides an outsize boost to profitability. Running less-efficient processes is akin to leaving money on the table and walking away, which companies can little afford to do anymore.
Your company needs to be able to perform operations, knowing that it's being done in the fastest time possible, to the tightest tolerances, and that maximum profitability is achieved. The single most effective way to achieve this is by using digital tools and technology to enhance human operations. Under Don's leadership, Tempest Minerals has been able to begin this process and are well underway. He explains, "Some companies like us [Tempest Minerals] are rapidly digitizing, and we use products like Grid to remove a lot of those inefficiencies, so we don't use pen and paper in the field anymore, we can record our data all on an app and it goes into our cloud database where we can interpret it."
Lesson 3: Inertia is the enemy
Especially in more established industries and companies, there is a tendency for inertia to set in. However, "we've always done it this way" is a mantra for a more stable time. Companies that are reluctant to experiment or push the digitization envelope will find themselves lagging behind, their processes growing less and less efficient when compared to organizations like Tempest Minerals and a whole host of other mining and mineral exploration companies that are eagerly embracing digitization of their processes.
Lesson 4: The Vision Is Seamless, Real-Time Visibility
Ideally, Don wants to bring Tempest Minerals (and the wider mineral exploration industry) to a place where data flows seamlessly from the field, through analysis, and into a decision-making environment. "Our [Tempest Minerals'] vision is that someone can collect a sample or make an observation in the field, using Grid, for example, then that data goes straight into our system, and then either them or someone else uses that data one second later to interpret that data. So if you're logging a drill hole, you'd log that there are X, Y, or Z rocks, then turn to your computer and draw a 3D model of what that rock is, in real-time. So as you're logging in, you're doing the interpretation simultaneously. That's absolutely the vision. At Tempest, we're mostly doing that - we have a few hiccups at the moment - but we're mostly doing that right now."
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