Glencore Technology have introduced the world’s first 25% performance guarantee, eclipsing the seldom-mentioned 5% performance guarantees offered by some of the world’s major-asset mining technology providers. “Performance guarantees are used quietly to underwrite performance on major assets in a flowsheet like comminution, flotation and leaching. Most are not openly touted as policy and are quietly negotiated in the contract stages of a project. Most performance guarantees are minor, falling between 5% and 10%.”
“We conducted market research and we really knew what the result was going to be. The market treats traditional performance guarantees as mild assurances, only. They don’t reflect the skin in the game that ought to be perceived by a company if it stands by its technology,” says Glencore Technology’s Mike Hourn. As Technology Lead, his teams are integral to specifying and delivering the company’s technologies. “Traditional performance guarantees just don’t express confidence in the technology’s performance. The thing that really makes GT different from others is that our technologies are developed in the real world.”
He adds: “If you look at things like the IsaMill, it came from the need to develop the McArthur River lead-zinc deposit. It needed finer grinding so that the p80 was sub 7 microns. But nothing existed that would do it properly. So it had to be created. From that came the world’s only horizontal fine grinding system. Safe, reliable and delivering what was needed.”
Hourn says it’s the same with the Jameson Cell and that even the relatively new Albion Process atmospheric leaching had been proven and re-proven before being promoted broadly. “We felt we were in a position to seriously explore a greater performance guarantee. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t cavalier about it. We’ve looked at past installations and put some thinking into it. But the fact remains that the core performance requirements we should and do deliver for our technologies are supported by evidence. So we took a breath and backed ourselves.”
The result is that for the most popular and demanded technologies, IsaMill fine grinding, Jameson Cell flotation and Albion Process leaching, Glencore Technology have introduced a 25% capital-back performance guarantee, underwriting 25% of the capital value of their technology installed. “In round figures, we have 130 metalliferous installations of IsaMill, all performing as they should; 350 Jameson Cells and they remain best in class; and Albion Process, has exceeded expectations in delivering value, ramp-up and performance. So we feel these are appropriate for a market leader to provide to our clients”, says Hourn. The performance guarantees are being rolled out on future projects, for these technologies, from October.
