Mining houses are realising the need for co-operation with others and are starting to share technology for the benefit of all parties. The need for good management and the retention of skills has become more important to their success. Possible future trends involve mining houses looking in the emerging economies for suitable projects to grow their mineral assets and realising the need to form joint ventures with local companies to manage country risks. The application of risk analysis to all areas of operations and decision making, will become a requirement. As mining progresses, a mineral resource is depleted and its value decreases.
Correct management can enhance the value of a resource over time.
For example, reducing production costs will add an equivalent value to the mineral resource - a resource that is known increases in value, because there is access to it. If this is achieved, it could result in a mining house re-defining its core business from commodity producer to asset manager. Due to technical and economic implications in the subsequent stages of the surface mining process, more and more effort is now being directed towards machine application and the optimisation of the whole rock excavation process. In the first 15 weeks of operation, Morila produced 193,000 oz of gold, more than half of it as free gold recovered by simple gravity concentration. The mining methods are tailored to the orebody characteristics and various phases of design were required to optimise the design, particularly with the progressive increase in geological information.