The founder and chair of Core Resources, one of Queensland’s oldest metallurgical consultancies, says there’s good reason to believe in the future of a dedicated tailings processing industry.
The founder and chair of Core Resources, one of Queensland’s oldest metallurgical consultancies, says there’s good reason to believe in the future of a dedicated tailings processing industry.
He says there are other influences being brought to bear.
“I think there’s a very good incentive and activity from government supporting this for good reasons,” says Mr Loraine.
“The other thing is major mining corporations, it’s become really front of mind to them … one of the very few things that can seriously damage them as an organisation is a big environmental or tailings problem.
“You’re seeing them putting serious money into producing less tailings and managing tailings properly and extracting full value from tailings materials.”
Mr Loraine says he agreed with the tenet that the best time to treat tailings is when the mine was in operation and the second best was when the mine has stopped and the run of mine is still operable.
He says tailings characterisation is the other effective effort which could be introduced earlier into the process.
“To some extent it holds the mining company more accountable, which is not a bad thing. It also makes that information available to third parties who may be interested in coming in (and) doing something with it.
Regulation would need to be considered to allow a third party on an operating lease to conduct commercial activities like retreatment, Mr Loraine said.
