While there has been interest in the sustainable operations (Susop) process from Australia-based miners, the process has received more interest from Africa and South Africa, owing to the mine development potential that the continent offers, sustainability consultancy SUSOP development manager Dr Glen Corder tells Mining Weekly.

Susop is a structured process of multidisciplin-ary workshops and supporting analysis conducted at the early phases of a project.

The implementation of Susop processes ensures that critical environmental, community and social issues are identified and translated into real opera- ting designs and practices that not only enable engineers to incorporate them into their work but which deliver new solutions.

Susop – essentially a sustainability, opportuni-ties and risks framework – aims to add rigor to the way in which sustainability processes is incorporated into the technical aspects of mine development and mine operation.

It has been designed for implementation during any stage of a project – the early stages, the operation stage and the closure stage. If the Susop framework is implemented early enough, the opportunity to understand the potential environmental, community or social issues of mine development can be determined. Early implementation also provides the opportunity to identify what initiatives and outcomes would produce the best sustainable credentials, while meeting the required technical and financial requirements for developing a mine.

Susop comprises three main features. The first is the structured brainstorming process that requires a multidisciplinary team across several disciplines to generate new ideas (opportunities) that will lead to better sustainability outcomes and identify risks that could impact sustainability performance.

These new ideas are then recorded and analysed in the form of a sustainable development balance sheet, which is used to illustrate the benefits and impact of each option using the five capitals model – comprising natural, human, social, manufactured and financial capitals.

All outcomes from Susop are recorded in a sustainability register, which is similar to a conventional risk register.

The Susop process, developed through a multiyear collaborative research effort between industry and research organisations, is being commercialised through JKTech, which, in turn, is the technology transfer company for the Sustainable Minerals Institute at the University of Queensland, in Australia.

Corder says with any mining development, specifically those on the African continent, environmental, social and community issues need to be properly managed. He adds that Africa differs from Australia with regard to the social considerations that have to be taken into account, owing to the number of people in the local communities, who potentially are seeking employment either directly or indirectly during a mining project.

“While some may regard this as a challenge, this prospect provides a good opportunity for companies developing mines in Africa to be profitable and to strengthen their social licence to operate. This can be achieved by developing initiatives that will support local communities, which, in turn, will strengthen companies’ long-term viability going forward,” he explains.