When metals prices are high, we are generally told that we should lower the cutoff grade. Our cutoff grade versus metal price formula tells us this is the correct thing do. Our grade-tonnage curve reaffirms this since we will now have more metal in the mineral reserve.
But is lowering the cutoff grade the right thing?
Books have been written on the subject of cutoff grades where readers can get all kinds of detailed logic and calculations using Greek symbols (F = δV* − dV*/dT). Here is one well known book by Ken Lane, available on Amazon HERE.
Recently we have seen a trend of higher cash costs at operating mines when commodity prices are high. Why is this?
It may be due to higher cost operating inputs due to increasing labour rates or supplies. It may also be partly due to the lowering of cutoff grades. This lowers the head grade, which then requires more tonnes to be milled to produce the same quantity of metal.
A mining construction manager once said to me that he never understood us mining guys who lower the cutoff grade when gold prices increase. His concern was that since the plant throughput rate is fixed, when gold prices are high we suddenly decide to lower the head grade and produce fewer and higher cost ounces of gold.
Do the opposite
His point was that we should do the opposite. When prices are high, we should produce more ounces of gold, not fewer. In essence, periods when supply is low (or demand is high) may not be the right time to further cut supply by lowering head grades.
Now this is the point where the grade-tonnage curve comes into play.
Certainly one can lower the cutoff grade, lower the head grade and produce fewer ounces of gold. The upside being an extension in the mine life. A company can report more ounces in reserves and perhaps the overall image of the company looks better (if it is being valued on reserves). To read more about the value of grade-tonnage curves, you check out this blog post “Grade-Tonnage Curves – Worthy of a Good Look“.
What if metal prices drop back?
The problem is that there is no guarantee that metal prices will remain where they are and the new lower cutoff grade will remain where it is. If the metal prices drop back down, the cutoff grade will be increased and the mineral reserve will revert back to where it was. All that was really done was accept a year of lower metal production for no real long term benefit.
This trade-off contrasts a short term vision (i.e. maximizing annual production) against a long term vision (i.e. extending mineral reserves).
Conclusion
The bottom line is that there is no simple answer on what to do with the cutoff grades. Hence there is a need to write books about it.
Different companies have different corporate objectives and each mining project will be unique with regards to the impacts of cutoff grade changes on the orebody.
I would like to caution that one should be mindful when plugging in new metal prices, and then running off to the mine operations department with the new cutoff grade. One should fully understand both the long term and short term impacts of that decision.
In another blog post on the cutoff grade issue, I discuss whether in poly-metallic deposits the cutoff should be based on metal equivalent or block NSR value. Neither approach is perfect, but I prefer the NSR option. You can read that post at “Metal Equivalent Grade versus NSR for Poly-Metallics“.
I think the relevant driver is net present value, not metal price. Given the restrictions of mill throughput, (and pit fleet size) the planning engineer should be attempting to provide the best NPV possible over the life of the orebody. This can be done quite simply using Whittle or another NPV scheduler, although I’ve only done it in Whittle.
If you use Whittle, try this on your next project. Fix all the variables except the mill lower ore grade. Vary this grade and run some (a half dozen or so) optimizations. Then plot the cut-off against the resulting NPV’s and you will get a curve with a maximum NPV value, falling off towards either side of that value. This is the cut-off you want to select. You can also run the same optimizations at different metal prices to get a series of curves, but the optimal cut-off won’t change because, as your construction friend said…mill throughput is fixed.
I like Whittle because it’s a strategic “what if” tool that integrates all of the mine variables to produce a result that even the boardroom cannot disagree with.
After my last comment I downloaded and read the book sample. It appears to state what I said above. Look for ways to maximize NPV rather than mine life. The best way to do that is to pull grade forward in time, which means raising the cut-off or mining any high grade plums as soon as practicible.
Jack Caldwell had a blog post about whether NPV was the best tool to use for evaluating risk. I think I had an email discussion with some of the participants. I’ll look to see if I can find the text they sent me.
In my experience the most common way to enhance NPV and reduce payback (i.e. risk) is to use stockpiles to process high grade and defer low grade. So the mining cutoff may still be to the breakeven COG but the processing target COG will be something higher. The hope is that at some time in the future the low grade can be processed (as long as metal prices haven’t dropped in which case the low grade SP might now be waste). I have seen several instances near the end of mining where the low grade SP has now been designated a waste dump.
Here is an interesting webinar from AMC (http://www.amcconsultants.com/training/webinar-delivering-stakeholder-goals) on optimizing the production plan, including cutoff. Essentially this type of optimization is really just detailed sensitivity analyses. Often this is usually handled in a cursory manner in studies since a lot of man-hours are required to do it properly (see my previous blog).
Yes, I agree on stockpiles. The exercise I wrote about will help determine the appropriate upper cut-off grade.
If mine life is lengthy then processing them is a few years out and heavily discounted. Nevertheless they become a balance sheet item and can cause significant negative adjustments when prices are as low as they are nowadays. They also cause confusion over strip ratio depending on whether the low grade is included or not. Lastly, they will come under scrutiny as a closure liability if they contain significant pyrite.
I will look at the link later today.
Good video! Thanks. It made me realize that value improvment isn’t just a 2D study.
Yeah, it’s more than 2D for sure and its more than 3D. In the video they examined two factors that the operator can control such as mill production rate and basic COG. The operator can also control grind size (i.e. recovery), stockpiling strategies, and probably other things to. So the 3D graphs can become much more complex and that’s what these guys are trying to do (http://www.whittleconsulting.com.au/enterpriseoptimisation.html).