SWITCHING ON SUSTAINABLE MINING
acceptability of mining to society .
What specific challenges does the industry face when mining in Europe as opposed to say , Australia , or Africa ? The issue we have in Europe is that our supply root is generally from other countries and that means that we have an inherent risk in European manufacturing . The issue in Europe is that the world class huge deposits are generally mined out , as the world class deposits are in other countries . Europe has vast resources , but they ’ re largely in small high-grade complexes , which don ’ t attract as much investment . We have the potential to mine for ourselves , however the small deposits we have aren ’ t necessarily going to be competitive with the world class deposits in the production costs-pertonne . With the world class deposits you ’ re working with economies of scale essentially . The only way for Europe to be competitive in terms of production is to find a way of mining that can be done in a very cost-efficient way that doesn ’ t require as much investment - that ’ s what the technological side is about . The benefits of world class deposits are that you ’ re going to employ a large work force over a long space of time . If that ’ s not the case , we ’ ll have to design the mining approach to work around the community and increase the life of mines by decreasing production . There ’ s a lot to work out , but if we can do that , then the small European deposits could theoretically operate in competition to international world class deposits .
Can you talk about the timescales involved in the IMP @ CT project ? This has really come from debates with manufacturers . The manufacturers at the very end of the value chain are making decisions about the release of products based on how long they can be sure to have reliable access based on particular metals . They may be deciding whether or not to take a particular product to market or if their supply from one particular mine runs out , where do they go elsewhere ? The issue is that geologically we don ’ t have a problem in access to resources . Geologically the resources are available for all these technologies . The real issue is how long it takes from identifying a new deposit geologically
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