Whittle Consulting Limited (WCL) has announced its partnership with Largo Resources to apply its Enterprise Optimisation solution on Largo’s Maracas Menchen vanadium operation in Bahia, Brazil. Enterprise Optimisation is unlike other unit focussed optimisation process. It analyses the full business chain simultaneously over life of mine with the focus being on NPV improvement. WCL achieves these results through collaboration with the client’s team, using proprietary ‘Prober’ software and applying recognised technical and economic maxims such as Ken Lane’s variable cut-off grade, theory of constraints and activity based costing. WCL ensures that clients and asset owners like Largo have access to the strategic tool kit that Enterprise Optimisation provides.
The results are greater capital discipline, improved margins and accelerated cash flows, often doubling cash in the first five years after application. Enterprise Optimisation has been used on over 100 occasions in both projects and operations globally and has generally improved asset NPV between 5 and 35% and significantly more.
The Maracas mine uses open pit mining techniques from a central open pit deposit, with future satellite pits also planned along a 7 km trend. These feed a process plant consisting of crushing, grinding, magnetic separation, concentrate roasting and leaching, filtration and precipitation circuits to produce vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) flake and byproduct of iron ore concentrate at a plant feed rate of 1.4 Mt/y. This entire process will be scheduled and modelled within Prober to develop monthly, quarterly and annual LOM schedules
The Maracas Menchen mine has a number of potential value added opportunities which have not been identified using conventional silo based optimisation techniques. Largo is adopting Whittle Best Practices and the team is willing to apply these to further improve life of mine profitability and provide a strategic planning tool. Whittle expects, through the application of Best Practices and knowledge transfer to the Maracas Menchen team, “that these opportunities will be exploited and provide a significant improvement in both cash flow and overall NPV of the operation.”