Project Overview
This project delivers a geometallurgy-informed framework to unlock the value of critical, strategic, and precious metals from all legacy tailings, including sulfide and iron ore tailings that account for around 50% of the world’s tailings. By integrating mineralogical, chemical, physical, metallurgical, and spatial data, this approach addresses tailings variability and guides the design of efficient, fit-for-purpose reprocessing flowsheets. The framework can also be applied to active tailings streams to evaluate and predict processing performance in real time, ensuring practical, results-driven solutions for industry. With this project, we demonstrate how critical minerals and gold can be efficiently identified, assessed, and recovered from tailings.
Target Minerals
The project focuses on the assessment and recovery of high-value elements, including but not limited to copper, nickel, cobalt, Platinum-group metals (PGMs), vanadium, titanium, and rare earth elements (REEs), gold and silver.
Why This Work Matters This geometallurgical approach links tailings characteristics to processing performance, enabling confident, data-driven decisions and reducing technical and economic uncertainty. Many legacy tailings still contain unrecovered critical and precious minerals, and this framework turns the potential into real value for industry. Reprocessing tailings can:
- Recover valuable materials while reducing environmental and geotechnical risks
- Improve resource efficiency and sustainability
- Support ESG, energy transition, and decarbonisation objectives
Sponsorship & Participation Opportunities Sponsors will obtain:
- Comprehensive characterisation of present tailings streams and/or past tailing storage facilities to assess recovery potential
- Development of geometallurgically-informed models to optimise processing strategies
- Guidance on flowsheet design, test work, and economic trade-offs
- Application to online tailings streams for real-time performance evaluation
- Workshops, training, and knowledge-transfer activities
- Findings applicable to existing operations, brownfields, or future developments
Target Sponsors This project is ideal for:
- Resource companies with legacy or active tailings, including sulfide, iron ore, and other deposits, seeking to unlock value from critical, strategic, and precious metals
- Companies aiming to repurpose tailings of all types as future sources of valuable elements
- Operations looking to reduce tailings footprint, closure liabilities, and environmental risks through innovative processing
- Organisations enhancing ESG performance and long-term asset value by turning untapped tailings into profitable resources
