Metals & Mining
The resource-intensive metals and mining industry is a frequent user of SDG's strategic decision-making approach. SDG consultants command a long-standing and deep understanding of the mining industry and commodity metals markets – from new project development to ongoing operations to end-of-mine shutdown and environmental remediation.
And we integrate individual mine values at a corporate portfolio level to better gauge clients' business needs, prospects, and market guidance.
On the new project development side, SDG helps clients to build upon their information and technical capabilities in core drilling, cone models, pit models, and mine optimization plans. We can explicitly address uncertainties in ore body sizes and grades, mining costs, and recovery process yields and costs. We understand the lead times, capital requirements, and project life cycles to do a better job reckoning what is economically recoverable from a given ore body, and to develop a mine plan that optimizes that value. This includes knowing our way around the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) contracting process.
For existing mines, we focus on the uncertainties in constantly fluctuating metal prices and market conditions; integrate with mine operations management and annual mine plan reviews and revisions; and evaluate whether and how to hedge prices and provide updated Net Asset Values (NAVs) for those mines as well as provide guidance on plan review.
When a mine is nearing the end of its economic life, SDG helps define options and risks for shutdown and environmental remediation plans. By understanding the uncertainty inherent in each of the alternatives, clients achieve insight to forge the optimal, most economic plan for a given mine.
At the portfolio level, we help mining executives identify and contend with all the contributing uncertainties, and integrate them at a corporate level, thereby building greater confidence in business planning, capital planning, and market guidance processes. The difference SDG brings to the metals and mining industries is our comprehensive, bottom-up management of risks and uncertainties combined with a top-down, value-creation perspective.
