Maptek Provides Agile Technology for Gold Miners

The gold price is influenced by a raft of external factors so miners need agile technology to plan for different scenarios and quickly adapt to changes. Maptek solutions offer advanced features, algorithms for running ‘what if’ scenarios and flexible platforms and applications, enabling users to cope with the fluctuations in today's commodities market.

The mine technology developer will showcase its innovations at the biennial gold exploration conference, NewGenGold, in Perth, WA, this week. WA State Manager of Sales and Services, Mike Husbands, said Maptek modelling and mine planning software Vulcan 10 would include a new Data Analyser tool for variogram analysis when it was released in March.

‘Vulcan Data Analyser will give users intuitive new tools to better understand geological data,’ Mike said. ‘It has the ability to dynamically update variograms based on changing parameters and output high-quality charts for reporting. ‘Users will be able to run scenarios quickly so they can focus on analysing them and can easily modify them if conditions change.’

Mike said Vulcan 10 would also allow users to display block models made up of hundreds of millions of block, offer extra support for multi-threaded processors for improved performance. ‘A new open pit option takes the pain out of creating scheduling blocks from your pit solids.

Vulcan 10 will also include enhanced implicit modelling with new uncertainty and radial basis functions,’ he said. ‘All the latest developments are geared around saving time and positioning users to be able to adapt their models and mine plans to the challenges that the geology or the market presents.’

Mike said Maptek Evolution was the perfect tool to use the scheduling blocks created in Vulcan to maximise operational efficiency. ‘Evolution is a unique platform for handling strategic cut-off grade optimisation as well as tactical scheduling using a single dataset,’ he said. ‘It generates integrated medium and long term plans that minimise haulage hours while maximising recovered metals and mine life.’

Maptek will be at Booth 12 of NewGenGold 2015 at the Pan Pacific Perth.