Healthy geoscience data critical piece of puzzle for copper miner

Tritton Resources Limited (Tritton) is a fully owned subsidiary to Aeris Resources Limited. Chris Raymond, Tritton’s Exploration Superintendent, is in charge of a small team working to ensure the long-term future for the company at their operation in central New South Wales. Using acQuire’s GIM Suite to its fullest potential is a critical piece of the puzzle the company has to get right in order to achieve this goal.

Growing to become a multi-mine operation

Aeris Resources is an independent producer of Australia’s fifth largest volume of copper.

Aeris’ Tritton Copper Operations has delivered record production in recent years and is aiming to produce 25,500 tonnes of copper in 2019. The Tritton Copper Operations include multiple mines and a 1.8 million tonne per annum processing plant.

Their current focus is to become a mid-tier copper producer. Optimising current assets to work as efficiently as possible so they can step up into the copper-only mid-tier space, where there aren’t a lot of players, is the goal.

Data integrity issues creating concern

Aeris have used an acQuire GIM solution since 2004. After 15 years, the software use is well established and mature in the company, however new changes to processes meant some tasks were being done manually outside of the GIM Suite.

Only one person had completed administrator training through acQuire’s GIM Suite Learning program, so users were working around issues that could be easily changed with the right training.

The team wanted to ensure the highest level of integrity of their data. Recently discrepancies within the database had been identified, which worried Tritton Exploration Superintendent, Chris Raymond.

“We haven’t had anyone look at our GIM Suite for a while and we had an issue with a data importer. The data seemed to import correctly, though some funny priorities were assigned. This caused us to be suspicious of how the importer was working, and perhaps other objects which had not been reviewed for a long time.”

Much of our ability to display and report results, hinges on good data integrity within GIM Suite, There are significant ramifications for getting it wrong, so any discrepancies, no matter how minor need to be investigated.”

A thorough evaluation and practical advice

While Tritton was confident the core assay data was correct, they decided it would be beneficial to engage acQuire to perform both a Health Check and a Site Efficiency Assessment of their set up.

acQuire visited the Tritton site to understand their concerns about the way they used the software including forms, structures and variances from standard procedure.

Following the delivery of a 100+ point checklist, acQuire’s Technical Advisers came on site and started working on issues to get Tritton moving in the right direction right away, Chris Raymond said.

“It involved education of the onsite staff and setting up the tool to minimize errors during entry of data…the acQuire team were great and very helpful and practical.”

“One person from acQuire was involved in delivering both the health check and the onsite visit, which was good because it provided continuity.”

A Health Check

A Health Check reviews the configuration of your GIM Suite in three key areas of your database: database structure, the actual data, and your workspaces. This 100+ point check of your database ensures the structure and workspaces are shipshape and performing efficiently.

Business benefits:

• Improved compliance to statutory guidelines
• New features can be incorporated into your workflows
• Optimised workflows and shortcuts to increase productivity.

A site efficiency assessment:

A Site Efficiency Assessment (SEA) conducted by acQuire analyses your Geoscientific Information Management (GIM) processes in detail and the data flow through your GIM Solution. You can choose to assess a section of your processes or your whole mining workflow from drillhole planning to resource modelling. We meet with you to determine your assessment requirements and tailor the assessment to suit your individual business needs.

Solid foundation to grow from

Chris Raymond said his team at Tritton is now empowered with a list of items to address and the training to tackle them in order of priority.

“We now have visibility of all the anomalies, and it has enabled the team to work on the issues.”

He said the team enjoyed the process because it benefitted them all directly.

“The biggest benefit was to make the teams lives easier – in 100 little ways. Little things like streamlining, training and so on. For example, setting up their workspace so it fits the flow of their data entry instead of having to click around constantly, which can lead to mistakes.”

acQuire also provided an independent skills assessment of the team and recommended training through GIM Suite Learning to help build internal capabilities.

In Short

Company

• Tritton Resources Limited is preparing for future growth and expansion into a mid-tier, copper producer.

Industry

• Copper mining

Solution

• acQuire performed a health check and site efficiency assessment to help Tritton increase confidence in their reporting and streamline the process of data entry.

Challenge

• The application of GIM Suite software was not in line with current business needs and some unexplained errors had crept into the process.

Results

• It’s now easier for the company to collect and maintain their data and they have confidence the data viewed and reported is accurate and correct.