Mine planning is no longer just about tonnes and grades – it’s about creating lasting value only which serve the company’s financial, commercial, and ESG goals. In volatile markets with tight capital and high stakeholder scrutiny, Innourbia Solutions bridges the alignment between planning and business objectives using advanced software platforms and data-driven workflows.
Start With Value, Not Volume
Define success up front
Success in mining is defined differently across projects – whether rapid payback, steady free cash flow, or maximum NPV is the priority. Using K-Mine’s mine scheduling tools, we can design cut-off policy, phase design, mining rate, stockpiling, and equipment selection to deliver that outcome matching the client’s business priorities instead of chasing tonnes.
Link the Orebody to the Market
Build geometallurgy into scheduling and blending
Orebody knowledge drives value. With Leapfrog Geo and Imago, Innourbia integrates geometallurgical domains into Model recovery, hardness, and deleterious elements. This ensures off-take contacts are met, protect payability, stabilise plant performance, and keep logistics predictable.
Design Around Bottlenecks
Plan for the true constraint
Identifying limits in haulage, crushing, milling, water, power, tailings, or port slots is critical. By simulating mine flows in K-Mine and testing scenarios in Seequent Central we can optimize shape phases, ramps, dump placement, and haul profiles to keep the critical path flowing and reduce cost and emissions.
Plan With Scenarios, Not Single Answers
Make volatility a managed variable
Markets are volatile. Using probabilistic mine planning, we prepare base, downside and upside cases for variables like strip ratio, recovery, fuel reagents, and FX. This structured optionality helps to run sensitivities to preserve investor confidence and project resilience.
Close the Loop With Reconciliation
Turn feedback into better plans
Reconcile short-range, medium-range, and life-of-mine plans monthly. Innourbia employs Oasis Montaj for geostatistical QA/QC and integrates this into K-Mine for, track plan versus actuals for tonnes, grade, dilution, recovery, availability, and unit costs, as well as feeds the learnings back into models and parameters.
Use Cut-Off Grade as a Strategic Lever
Shape cash-flow timing and mine life
Raising cut-off can accelerate payback and NPV but may shorten life; lowering it can extend life but reduce early margins. With REE and bauxite projects in India, our approach has improved recovery margins by upto 18% while maintain sequence shells or stopes to balance near-term cash with long-term commitments.
Embed ESG Into Design, Not Just Reporting
Plan for license to operate from day one
Let water, waste rock, tailings, dust, noise, biodiversity, land use, and closure obligations guide layout and schedules. Include progressive rehabilitation and track ESG milestones alongside tonnes and costs.
Design for Energy and Decarbonisation
Reduce fuel burn and emissions by design
Evaluate in-pit crushing and conveying, trolley assist, conveyorized haulage, and renewables plus storage. Optimise ramp geometry, shorten hauls, and right-size fleets for fast, compounding CO₂ and cost wins.
Apply Technology With Data Discipline
Use digital tools to test choices, not clean spreadsheets
Standardise naming, timestamps, and spatial references across geology, survey, maintenance, and plant systems. Automate capture from face to plant, and use guidance, FMS, drill-to-mill, and light digital twins to compare options in real time.
Choose the Right Operating Model
Match risk and flexibility to the asset
Contractors can speed ramp-up with lighter capital; owner-operator often excels on long-life assets. Write contracts around outcomes—availability, cycle time, dilution, recovery—rather than hours or tonnes alone.
Strengthen Governance and Cadence
Align decisions and numbers across teams
Set stage gates from resource updates through feasibility to go-live. Run monthly integrated planning with geology, operations, processing, maintenance, HSE, finance, and marketing, using a single source of truth.
Invest in People and Culture
Make value drivers visible at the face
Ensure supervisors and operators understand why sequences matter. Use visual controls, simple value-linked KPIs, and recognition for reconciliation wins. Capture shop-floor improvements and cycle them quickly into the plan.
Conclusion
When mine planning is tied directly to business objectives, assets respond faster to price swings, margins hold without burning optionality, and trust with regulators and communities strengthens. Innourbia delivers this alignment by combining advanced softwares with global best practices ensuring cash flows grow more predictable, capital is deployed with confidence, and closure is designed from the start—aligned in practice for modern, resilient mining.
