Challenges of Cave Mining

The interest in cave mining is being fuelled by the depletion of near surface orebodies suitable for open pit operations, relatively high production rates and low operating cost. Also, a number of open pits have a continuation of the orebody below their economic depth, and further exploitation of often large low-grade resources at depth would not support a more expensive mining method. In recent years, besides the economics of high strip ratio, the environmental concern also plays an important role when comparing open pit mass mining and caving. Cave mines can have a significantly smaller footprint than a comparable open pit, since waste mined is only limited to underground infrastructure development.

There are over 50 global cave mining projects in various stages of studies and development. Despite the fact that the cave mining method is more than 100 years old, it is only within the past 20 years that this method has spread from initial cave mining centres to six continents. There are currently approximately 17 cave mining operations in 11 countries.

Download this 16 article newsletter to explore the challenges and future opportunities of cave mining.