Efficiency & Extraction Operations in Mining

Three laps around the planet, a $300 million shortcut and a former Wallaby with a plan to get WA’s Mid West iron ore moving. What could possibly go wrong?

Every day, Fenix Resources' road trains travel a combined 120,000 kilometres, the equivalent of three laps around the planet, hauling iron ore across WA's Mid West, and now former Wallaby John Welborn reckons a $300 million shortcut could help transform the region's mining industry, provided he can get the economics right, keep shareholders happy and resist talking about rugby long enough to build the bloody thing.

Before you scrap that haul truck tyre, check the casing, the cost per hour and the 10 tonnes of CO2 you might be throwing away with it

Repairing a giant mining tyre can do more than save replacement cost: for some Australian OTR tyres, it can also avoid up to 10 tonnes of calculated CO₂ while keeping a high-value asset in service.

Forget the price chart, the real threat to Australian mine margins is hiding in the sulphur bill, the freight invoice and the silica assay

S&P Global’s June quarter market review shows the pressure on Australian operations shifting from what miners sell to what they spend.

Built to take a beating: ContiTech brings Shield Survivor to Australia after Americas use, with 42 percent lower abrasion loss in laboratory testing.

ContiTech’s new Shield Survivor conveyor belt arrives in Australia’s underground hard-rock market with a 42 percent lower laboratory abrasion-loss result than FR Tuff 2G and applications already in the Americas.

The base case is zero. The reality is 20 per cent over. Mining’s most expensive assumption isn’t going away.

Will Kendall has a line that lands with the quiet force of something everyone in the room already knew but hadn’t quite said out loud: "Base case is cost overruns of over 20 per cent," Will says, "That’s your base case.

A pail of epoxy, a mill shell worth millions, and the surface prep that decides which one you end up replacing

Henkel has moved production of its high impact wearing compound to Victoria and cut lead times by two thirds.

There is an armchair on the beach of a closed pit lake and the gates are locked. Which tells you much of what you need to know about mine water safety

Mine water safety conversations default to tailings dams, but Dr Cherie McCullough spent an hour explaining why the larger risk is day to day exposure to as little as 1.

Africa proved it can move the cobalt price, then lost a third of the quota to paperwork, which is the part Australian operations should read twice

Africa's critical mineral producers are shifting from hosting resources to setting terms, and a recent intelligence briefing shows the leverage is real, the value capture is not yet, and the read-through for Australian operations is sharper than the geopolitics suggests.

WA mining’s half-trillion-dollar year proves preparation pays when commodity markets turn

WA-listed companies added almost A$131 billion in market value during FY26, but the strongest performers did more than catch a commodity upswing.

Free rare earths with every tonne, and other reasons Australia lost half the lithium market but kept all the money

Australia's share of China's lithium concentrate imports has almost halved since 2022, but the interesting question is not who took it – it is why they are being paid so much less for it.