JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The mining industry was on Wednesday urged to make a strong new effort to win back lost investor support by making full use of the growing array of modern tools that are able to predict capital return with unprecedented accuracy.

Speakers at the 2015 Mining Business Optimisation conference at Mintek - which is being held under the auspices of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy - urged the bringing together of technical and commercial data to provide boards of directors and the investor community with highly accurate information.

Digiterra executive Steve Smith said currently available tools were conditionally capable of guaranteeing earnings before interest and taxation (Ebit).

MineRP mining executive Mike Woodhall, who chaired the conference, told Creamer Media's Mining Weekly Online on the sidelines of the conference: “We can bring all the mining technical data together and make it available to allow the modern tools to do their jobs of optimisation, simulation and analysis.”

Woodall added that these optimisation tools could not be brought to bear on mining until recently because its data was inaccessible, given that it is created in so many different places - "323 or more and from 91 different vendors".

But now mathematical engines were able to expose poor mining logic and mining companies, armed with the latest methods of doing things, would be able to go on investor road shows with new confidence.

Anglo American project implementation head Alan King emphasised the crucial importance of determining operational variability ahead of taking steps to optimise systems, by highlighting the potential obstacles in the way of the achieving the best outcomes.

“The right work, done in the right way, at the right time, will ensure return on capital,” added King, who outlined an instance on a South African mine of new planning, scheduling and resource work achieving a 25% output increase without a single cent of capital needing to be invested.

“It’s an iterative, intensive process to understand the purpose of the work and how it should be done,” said King, who added that assumptions that current practice was correct needed to be revisited.

He blamed the lack of detail, planning and scheduling for the industry-wide problem of ‘zero production days’ and expressed confidence to Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online that adequate detail, planning and scheduling – juxtaposed on supply-and-demand fundamentals – could assure a return on capital for investors.

“An unplanned, zero production day is the worst use of capital that you can actually have,” said King, who spoke of insufficient focus being given to detailing what needed to be done.

Smith – who said that the game had changed, the playing field had changed and the rules had changed – called for strong emphasis to be placed on allowing orebodies to dictate in such a way that the greatest possible level of free cash flow could be generated.

It was up to the mining industry to win back the confidence of the global markets through a sharper focus on the metrics and indicators that delivered free cash flow.

He assured that if the correct parameters were placed in the correct sequence and juxtaposed against day-to-day market and country risk factors, accurate Ebit results could be predicted.

“Let's not focus on fish eagles when you’re in the swamp and up to your armpits in crocodiles. Let's focus on the crocodiles,” Smith commented, adding that to do so would mean new emphasis on the mineral asset itself.