Report Focuses on Underground Hard-Rock Mining

Based in Guyana, Barry Kevin O ‘Rourke is a longtime mining executive who focuses on gold and diamonds in his extraction activities in jungle tracts. Barry Kevin O ‘Rourke keeps up with the relevant trends in the mining industry.

According to a July 2021 McKinsey & Company report that delved into underground hard-rock mining, while underground mining makes up approximately 40 percent of total operations worldwide, it accounts for only 12 percent of run-of-mine (raw unprocessed) production. One reason for this is that underground mines are more targeted and expensive to develop while yielding less output than open-pit mines.

At the same time, underground methods offer relatively little flexibility, as they tend to be defined by the geologic characteristics of the deposit. There are limited ways of meeting the overall aim of maximizing net asset value across the mine’s productive lifespan.

There are, however, significant areas for improvement, as half of all underground mine production involves stoping methods. This is the second most expensive method of mining. Far less utilized but yielding outsized production is block caving. This method’s operational expenditures are the lowest of any methods of underground hard-rock mining, with economics approaching open-pit operations. For this reason, expansion opportunities exist in the block caving sphere.