Australia-based business enhancement company Whittle Consulting Limited (WCL) in June signed a contract to supply strategic mineral company Largo Resources with its Enterprise Optimisation software suite to develop a new operational pit design on Largo’s Maracas Menchen vanadium mine in Bahia state, Brazil.

According to WCL, the Enterprise Optimisation software works unlike other unit-focused enhancement processes. It analyses the full business chain simultaneously over the lifeof the mine with the focus being on net present value (NPV) improvement.

This analysis is done through collaboration with the client’s team, using proprietary ‘Prober’ software and applying recognised technical and economic maxims, such as variable cutoff 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 more than 100 occasions in projects and operations globally and has generally improved asset NPV between 5% and 35%.

Largo’s Maracas mine uses openpit mining techniques to mine a central openpit deposit, with future satellite pits also planned along a 7 km trend.

The deposit feeds a process plant consisting of crushing, grinding, magnetic separation, concentrate roasting and leaching, filtration and precipitation circuits to produce vanadium pentoxide flakes and by-products of iron-ore concentrate at a plant feed rate of 1.4-million tonnes a year.

WCL will schedule and model this entire process within the Prober software system to develop monthly, quarterly and yearly life-of-mine schedules.

The Maracas mine has a number of potential value added opportunities, which have not been identified using conventional silo-based optimisation techniques, WCL says.

WCL expects that through the application of best practices and knowledge transfer to the Maracas team, these opportunities will be exploited and provide a
significant improvement in cash flow and the overall NPV of this operation.