Winner: Innovation and collaboration - Resources sector

BHP is focused on the resources the world needs to develop and decarbonise, including copper, nickel, potash, iron ore and metallurgical coal for the steel needed for global infrastructure and the energy transition.

CiDRA Minerals Processing develops advanced technologies and solutions that create new paradigms in the minerals processing industry with a focus on increasing enterprise value through optimisation, increased recoveries and enhancing the sustainability of limited and valuable resources. CiDRA Minerals Processing provides measurement and control solutions to over 460 mine sites in 46 countries.

Project: Partnership with CiDRA Minerals Processing for first of a kind grind circuit rougher at Carrapateena

Carrapateena has worked closely with CiDRA since 2019, to evaluate and collaborate on the implementation of the P29 technology which allows copper to be extracted at a much coarser grind size without increasing total power consumption – translating into a 20% reduction in energy per unit ton. (CiDRA Minerals' novel P29 Technology™ platform, is named after 29, the atomic number for copper, as it is in the copper mining industry where much of its initial potential and focus is found.)

Carrapateena is the lead customer for this technology, based on the strong collaboration and engagement between both parties. We have partnered with CiDRA to test this technology in America and on-site at Carrapateena.

As an early adopter, BHP has gained lead insights into P29 technology, and through this collaboration we can shape the development pathway of copper mining, helping to meet the world’s raw material needs in a responsible, equitable, and sustainable way – reducing the supply deficit, the grind energy demand, environmental footprint of the collection media, and supporting ESG goals to progress towards global electrification.

BHP has signed an agreement to bring a 5t per day pilot plant to Carrapateena next year, with the aim to progress to a full scale (3kt/d plant) installation to feed the Carrapateena expansion plans in the future.

This pilot is significant as it may mean Carrapateena will not need to build another concentrator to efficiently accelerate copper production.

Images

Microscopic photo of the media loaded with Carrapateena mineralisation