Management of Mineral Resources

Mining, as one of the world’s earliest industrial activities, continues to yield minerals and resources both valuable and fundamental to civilization. Yet the industry that produces such riches is not as lucrative as it may seem. It is one endeavor to discover a mineral deposit, and quite another to mine it profitably.

The industry’s strategy for coping with low profitability has focused primarily on controlling production costs. Despite mechanization, automation, and other technical improvements, the aggregate profitability of mining still falls far short of that realized by most other industries. What appears to be lacking, contends author Juan Camus, is not additional technical knowledge, but rather sound management practices that utilitize the existing knowledge base more productively. Management of Mineral Resources aims to raise the level of mining profitability through better management—the process of generating plans and supervising their implementation.

This book is concerned with the analysis of some of the internal, controllable factors that influence mining production effectiveness. It combines the best thinking in mining and management so that practitioners can devise a concrete strategy for generating maximum shareholder value. Ideas in both of these areas have rapidly evolved in recent years, and this insightful text presents an authoritative review of the current state of the art.

A mass of published material exists, yet it is widely scattered—much of it in technical papers—and therefore not readily accessible. The thought-provoking material in this book has been selected, summarized, and presented by the author in a form that preserves the perspective of its relative importance.