Newmont Merian
MPA
- Location: Suriname
- Client: Newmont Mining Corporation
- Technical Specs: AVEVA PI System and MPA
Project overview
When Newmont Merian, an open pit gold mine in north-eastern Suriname, South America, needed a production accounting and reporting solution to leverage its AVEVA PI System, Mipac was engaged to deliver.
In less than one year, Mipac’s work on this project resulted in more standardised reporting, easier decision-making and production tracking, as well as more time for operators to optimise and improve production.
This project leveraged Mipac’s expertise in solving complex challenges to save Newmont Merian both time and money.
Project highlights:
- Upgraded the production accounting system to leverage the AVEVA PI System
- Key plant data sources were integrated including:
- Assaynet (Assay Laboratory)
- Minestar (Plant Feed)
- Mineman (Bullion database/sales)
- EHS (Tailings/ETP compliance info)
- MPA applications provided a foundation for the production accounting system reporting and data entry.
Background
The Newmont Merian Mine is an open pit gold mine, located in north-eastern Suriname, approximately 98km south-east of the capital Paramaribo.
Operated by Newmont Suriname LLC, a fully owned subsidiary of Newmont Goldcorp Corporation, this mine’s annual gold production is 393 attributable Koz. The mine started commercial production in October 2016 and has an expected mine life of 12-14 years.
Newmont Merian was experiencing problems with labour-intensive manual data entry. This manual process was time-consuming, required manual data transfer between systems and resulted in errors. In addition, the existing Excel-based system lacked security options for sensitive data and did not provide access to real-time process data. While Newmont Merian’s data entry system tracked production, it provided no opportunity to interrogate inefficiency.
In 2019, Newmont Merian engaged Mipac as part of a CAPEX project to provide a production accounting and reporting platform. Mipac was chosen as Newmont’s preferred partner for this project following the successful completion of similar works at Newmont’s Cripple Creek Mine in Colorado.
Scope
Mipac was engaged to provide engineering services to the Newmont Merian gold mine, enabling them to develop a comprehensive digital reporting and analysis platform. This included:
- Implementation of Production Reporting to visualise production KPIs to key stakeholders
- Automating Metals Accounting, Shift and Process reports
- Using Logsheets to digitise and optimise the existing Excel/paper logsheets
- Integration and consolidation of data sources into a single repository
- AVEVA PI Asset framework design and development to support data sources, calculations and reporting
- User acceptance testing
- Remote training
- Remote support
Timeline
This project was initiated in late 2019 and officially commenced in January 2020. Though the core work was completed in less than twelve months, a three-year package of ongoing support was included from the beginning to ensure any results could be sustained in the long term.
Late 2019: Mipac engaged
January 2020: Initial site visit and stakeholder meetings
March 2020: Scoping and planning. Design and work on different interfaces.
June 2020: Initial design and integration complete
July 2020: Integration of mining system
November 2020: Met accounting complete
2021 – 2023: Ongoing MPA and PI System support
February 2022: Reconfiguration of the gravity gold calculations to provide additional accuracy
2023: Cloud migration support
Project challenges
Project challenges overcome by the team included:
- Working across two time zones, 13 hours apart
- Collaborating with third party vendors who managed mining and laboratory systems
- Working with additional challenges introduced by COVID-19 both on-site and in the office
- Needing to devise agile solutions for the customised production accounting that was requested
Results
With the implementation of MPA, Mipac helped the staff of Newmont Merian to gain greater visibility of their data and increased production insights – meaning that not only is their data more consistent and trustworthy, but they can also use this data to make short-term operational decisions and accurately account for how much income they are generating.
Mipac’s work has also helped the team with reporting and monitoring results in real-time, increasing reliability and meaning less time is spent on manual data entry.
Finally, staff are no longer putting out fires but optimising and improving production on-site, saving them time and, ultimately, saving the company money.