At the Future Minerals Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, IM Editorial Director Paul Moore met with Weir CEO Jon Stanton to talk about future flowsheets and a collaborative approach to advancing new technologies
Q From HPGRs to partnerships in areas in coarse particle flotation, Weir has a lot of the solutions that can help mining become more efficient both from a productivity but also sustainability point of view – is there still conservatism in the industry in deploying them, however? Is the easy way still to go conventional?
I really do think that the industry has reached a tipping point in terms of new technologies – though it has taken a long time to get there given the conservatism you mentioned. Miners and EPCMs have tended to be risk averse and stick with tried and tested options. But there is a realisation in mining now that we can’t just keep doing what we used to do especially in relation to energy and water consumption. There’s a rethink on how mines can grow their existing operations and how they put together greenfield operations. Weir is really well placed given the product portfolio that we have in-house but also the relationships that we now have with the likes of Eriez. We have built a network capability of our in-house technologies combined with technologies which others have that we think are complementary; and that includes thinking about how we can go to market together and present solutions to customers that will really help them tackle their challenges.
Weir CEO Jon Stanton and IM Editorial Director, Paul Moore
What has been really pleasing over the past couple of years are the conversations we had with many of major mining houses about how we can work together. Mining CEOs have openly admitted that mining today has the suppliers which it deserves as there has sometimes been a degree of arrogance based on ‘we know what we are doing, just give us the equipment.’ So it has been quite a site level, procurement and maintenance only, transaction-based relationship. This is rapidly shifting to a much more strategic level of relationship and a recognition that the individual mining houses can’t do everything on their own. It needs to be more of a collaborative effort. And we as suppliers I think need to also be bolder and braver in terms of challenging the mining houses to ask the right questions to deliver their overall objectives and to some extent to think outside the box. That dynamic has really changed in the past two to three years – today its about how we work together better, which includes the site level conversations but also CEO to CEO and C-suite to C-suite as well as regional leadership teams – a true collaboration means being connected at all levels. And this is happening already.
Q Do you think Weir is positioned well to be able to deliver on this philosophy in terms of the products that you have and the partners that you have? Do you also have an innovation spirit that is being recognised?
There are two things we have always done that have been core to our value proposition. And that is first to have great technology – there is great long term loyalty to many of our core products like Warman and GEHO pumps or ESCO GET. So we have that credibility for delivering high quality over time but also moving these core technologies forward. But I also think we distinguish ourselves in the way in which we embed ourselves in our customers’ operations and how we provide them with the service and support that they need 24/7 to keep their operations running. Delivering both of those things means we have a lot of trust; and that in turn provides us with a platform to then say to mining customers that we would like and hope you also see value in a deeper, more strategic relationship. If we didn’t have the pillars mentioned to support that, it would be a much more difficult proposition.
Q Is it actually translating into use of more innovative technologies and flowsheets on the ground, beyond just discussions and it being considered in feasibility stages?
Absolutely, and we have had some great examples – the order we recently received from Reko Diq in Pakistan being one – it is a significant project for this MENA and Central Asia region as well. The £53 million order includes our ENDURON® large format HPGRs, ENDURON® Elite wet and dry vibrating screens, WARMAN® slurry pumps, and CAVEX® hydrocyclones. We are also getting involved at an earlier stage with customers on projects. When I look at the order pipeline that is now building, both brownfield expansions and greenfield, a lot of them have the newer technologies coming through. And you mentioned EPCMs earlier – they are also really leaning into it to a greater degree. There is a real value add for them in being able to promote and offer new and especially technologies, and we have put a lot of effort into educating them and building our collaborations with them around what the current and future possibilities are. And in many cases they are now advocating newer technologies as they now see it as a competitive advantage. But it isn’t something that happens overnight – it has involved a lot of technical research, papers, working with academia – much of this together with the EPCMs. All to prove out what the newer technologies can really offer at an operational scale and setting.
Q Ultimately is taking mineral processing plants towards much more autonomy a focus for Weir as well? Taking what is already being done at remote operations centres to the next level?
It is already happening in other industries like chemicals and oil & gas, as well as in manufacturing – so-called dark factories, though these are often much cleaner and simpler environments that a minesite. I think the mining industry is learning from that and moving in that direction. It ticks a lot of boxes – particularly from a safety point of view getting people out of harm’s way and having to work in very remote locations, often with climate extremes or high altitude. So in terms of remote operations centres I think we will see more and more of it. On autonomy, building AI into plant control systems is already happening to better manage and optimise processes and bring a greater degree of real time intelligence and agility – we are doing this today with the technology we acquired with SentianAI. We are also going down this route with Motion Metrics in the mine – bringing a much greater level of real time monitoring and control with the ability to make rapid adjustments, and therefore making everything less batch based and siloed in the mine in terms of how it is controlled. This includes advances in ore sorting and pre-concentration. The easiest way for mining customers to reduce their energy consumption is to process less waste, so we are helping them cut waste out of the process as early as possible, but also in primary and secondary processing stages, especially in the grinding circuit. And they avoid having to deal with much lower tailings volumes. And if you are taking sand particles out as waste instead of fines, you are also making things much more manageable from a footprint point of view. So, overall, we are moving a lot of intelligence upstream and this has the added benefit of creating more capacity for ore processing in place of waste. Most concentrators today have 30-40% recirculating load because waste is not being eliminated early enough and this translates to wasted energy.
Q Is some of this being driven by the fact that mining projects will be easier to finance and permit the more sustainable they are – and the greater focus on social license to operate?
It is becoming more of a win win in that we need the economic and commercial side to go hand in hand with sustainability to be able to deliver returns, and this is happening today, and mineral processing technology is playing a major role in that. Every mine has its challenges whether it be in relation to water scarcity, biodiversity, indigenous populations, community engagement or a combination of all of these. Plus carbon reduction targets are playing a much greater role as well. Weir is helping make a difference in many of these areas – and this makes us a more attractive company to work for as well.
Q Are there still gaps in the Weir flowsheet that you would like to fill and become more of a one stop shop?
We are always looking for opportunities to broaden our offering to customers. And we have great examples of where we have done that organically. Look at CAVEX hydrocyclones – we did’t have this 15 years ago – we built it from within, and now we are the market leader in cyclones. We have already talked about other areas where we have entered into complementary partnerships. And then bolt on acquisitions are a third options, and one of the nice things there is the strength of our balance sheet so that we are in a position to make those moves where it makes sense to do so. I would also say mining customers today are less interested in just having one supplier for everything – they want the best available and best in class bit of kit for that particular part of the process whether that be the best mill, the best HPGR, the best pump or the best cyclone. If you can package and bundle some of these different leading technologies together to form a whole flowsheet then that is good of course, but it is very rare that a customer will compromise one piece of equipment if it is weaker just to have a complete package. I would say there is more of a move to have an umbrella approach when it comes to service and aftermarket than for the equipment and technology itself. This again plays to our strengths so is something we are working hard on as well which includes supporting competitor equipment as well as our own where it makes sense to do so.