How long does it take to turn a mineral discovery into a producing mine. Also how long does permitting really take? These are questions that I see asked frequently in mining circles. The answer often thrown around is “18 years.” Is that really true or is it just a much-repeated industry myth?
Answering these questions is one reason we created a new online App called Timeline Viewer, hosted on the Drilling Down website (https://sites.google.com/view/drillingdown).
What Is the Timeline Viewer
The Timeline Viewer is a online application where anyone can take a look at the milestone history of selected mining projects. Key milestones are laid out chronologically from initial exploration, through studies, permitting, and sometimes even up to production.
The Viewer puts it all in one place: a visual, browsable record of what happened and when. This information is derived from corporate press releases, and weblinks are provided.
This App was vibe coded using the Zite platform (https://www.zite.com/). Just explain to the AI what you want to create, and it then writes all the code for you. Very simple to use and fast.
Let’s look at some Viewer output. The example below is the standard timeline view for the Brucejack Project in BC. One can see the sequence of activities that occurred over time as the mine moved into production. A details table (not shown) provides a brief description of each event. Hover over a point to see the details.
An alternate way to examine the same timeline is to view the development progress in stages. In the Viewer app, we loosely use the term the “Lassonde Stages”, related to the Lassonde Curve (for more info). The Timeline Viewer lets you toggle on a view of the stages over time. Is it advancing towards production or flat lining at the same Stage.
For example, the image below shows the same Brucejack project with the Stages on the right side and milestones on the left axis. One can see the rapid rise as the project accelerates from exploration & studies (Stage II) to construction, commissioning, and production (Stage V). For comparison, the next image after Brucejack is the chart for the KSM Project. Do you notice any difference in the profile of the Stages?
The Viewer also allows one to see only the “permitting” events to focus on those. When was permitting initiated and when were approvals received? As an example, the timeline below is for the Generation Mining Marathon project, permitting activities only. They started the process in 2021 and received their federal final permit in 2025. The ball is in their court now.
Getting Started: The List of Projects
Before diving into an individual timelines, the obvious starting point is the List of Projects (https://jcrkyl7eju.zite.so/). This list gives you an overview of every project currently logged in the database (over 90 as of today).
You can browse the list in either Grid view or List view. Once you find a project of interest, clicking on it takes you to its timeline in the Viewer.
In the Viewer, (https://sites.google.com/view/drillingdown/timeline-viewer) you can trace the entire arc of a project’s development: when exploration drilling began, when a resource estimate was published, when studies (Preliminary Economic Assessment, Prefeasibility, Feasibility) were completed, when permits were approved, and when construction and commissioning eventually led to production. It’s a straightforward way to answer that “18 years” question for yourself, project by project.
Every milestone is categorized. The available categories cover the full lifecycle of a mining project: Exploration, Mineral Resource Estimate, Preliminary Economic Assessment, Prefeasibility Study, Feasibility Study, Permitting Activity, Permit Approval, Construction Start, Commissioning, Production, and a catch-all “Other” category for things like metallurgical testing, mergers, or partnerships that don’t fit neatly into the technical stages but are still significant to a project’s storyline.
All of the companies currently in the database (as of July 2026) are TSX listed. Many of their projects are in Canada, since government websites provide additional permitting timeline information as a backup. I noticed that some companies are much better at disclosing permitting steps than others. Its not often that I saw a company announce when public meetings were being held or when the public review period starts. I wonder why.
Why The Timeline Matters
For anyone following the mining sector, whether as an investor – analyst – geologist -engineer, the value of the Timeline Viewer is that it simplifies a series of press releases into a visual record.
You can look at different projects and start to notice patterns: which companies moved efficiently through permitting, which projects stalled for years at the exploration or pre-feasibility stage, and which ones sailed from discovery to production. Are there lifestyle companies out there in no hurry to get anywhere?
The Viewer is a tool for answering the “how long does it really take” question with actual information.
The Companion Piece: The Timeline Editor
The Timeline Viewer database is fed by a companion tool called the Timeline Editor, which is what allows the database to keep growing and stay current. The Editor is where the content gets compiled and maintained
If you’ve been following a specific project that isn’t in the database yet, you can add it yourself. Just send a message to KJKLTD@gmail.com to get access to the Editor. There is even a blank template available in Excel CSV format, so you can organize the project milestones on your own time and then upload them in the Editor.
One important thing to understand about this system is that it’s intended to be open source. Anyone who is given Editor access can modify a project’s timeline, which means there’s no absolute guarantee of accuracy on every entry. The information should be treated as crowdsourced rather than officially verified. Do not make investment decisions based on what you see here – this is for entertainment purposes only.
If you encounter a bug, issue or inaccuracy, please flag it by email (KJKLTD@gmail.com). We’re open to hearing comments, since nobody expects AI-written code to be 100% perfect.
Conclusion
The Timeline Viewer is a simple tool for seeing how mining projects actually move (or don’t move) from discovery through to production. Over time as more projects get logged, the database becomes a richer resource for answering that original question honestly: does it really take 18 years to build a mine or how long does it take to permit? With enough timelines in the database, you can decide for yourself.
Note: You can sign up for the KJK mailing list to get notified when new blogs are posted. Follow me on Twitter at @KJKLtd for updates and other mining posts. The entire blog post library can be found at https://kuchling.com/library/
For some free mining calculator apps, including project timelines and a simplified cashflow modeller, check out this website https://sites.google.com/view/drillingdown
In closing, here is a summary timeline of all the mines coming into production in Canada over the last decade (from what I could find). The link to the timeline is https://neeovjtd7t.zite.so/project/3cd8bd8a-148f-4bc9-9bc3-fa56617f12d8
Every few weeks we see another feasibility study completed. Normally the numbers will look fantastic. The feasibility study shows that a project could work, but will it really work?
Stalled projects will experience several of the roadblocks simultaneously. A single roadblock might be surmountable, but multiple roadblocks may not be.
The list of potential production roadblocks is extensive. Moving from the study stage to production is very difficult and very few can do it successfully. A positive feasibility study is a necessary but far from sufficient condition for production.
Inferred resources represent the lowest confidence category of mineral resources; typically estimated in zones with limited sampling and unconfirmed geological continuity. They carry the highest geological uncertainty of the three resource categories.
Companies sometimes will commence the permitting process based on their PEA study. There are some risks to doing this, and the Inferred resource creates one of these risks.
Let us examine some specific aspects of permitting that can be influenced by Inferred resources.
Inferred resources present a unique paradox; they can and can’t be used in mining economic analysis. They can be used to examine project viability but can’t be used to make a production decision.
Is the concept of optimization the most important factor in a project’s design? If so, which aspect is the most important to optimize? A danger is optimizing for a single criteria, for example NPV, at the expense of everything else. Selecting the optimal design for one aspect will likely result in being sub-optimal in some of the others.
Optimization of a mining project can yield meaningful cost and efficiency gains. However mines face inherent constraints, such as ore grade variability, geological surprises, equipment life cycles, and regulatory issues.
If one decides to pursue the path of operational flexibility, what are the things that help make it happen?
Rather than focus on constant optimization in design, it may be wiser to focus on a flexible design. Adaptability, flexibility, and resilience may be more important than being fully optimized.
I recently noticed a few new mining studies that relied on toll milling as their base case operation. This made me wonder if this is a trend and if there are more examples of where this is happening.
USER PROMPT: What are the risks of toll milling plan.
RESPONSE: The Qualified Person (QP) signing off on a technical study that uses toll milling as the base case carries significant professional and regulatory responsibility, particularly under NI 43-101 in Canada or JORC in Australia.
The results given by Claude are quite thorough and insightful. It’s hard to argue with its observations and conclusions. This research took all of 30 seconds, so I can see it is no longer difficult to become a blog writer. Writing isn’t the challenge; finding interesting topics is.
Recently I have been seeing more mining studies proposing to use the dry stack approach. In some cases, they no longer even do the typical tailings trade-off study that look at different options. The decision is made upfront that dry stack is the preferred route due to its environmental acceptability and positive perceptions.
The Guide covers several topics, including tailings characterization; site closure concepts; filtered tailings stack design; material transport, stacking systems; and tailings dewatering methods. The Guide covers all the basics very well. The one area that jumped out at me is the tailings characterization and testing aspect.
Major miners, such as BHP and Rio Tinto, typically spare no expense on material testing for metallurgical or geotechnical purposes. They have the funds available to test and engineer to a high level to adequately de-risk the project to meet their investment thresholds.
Normally Major and Intermediate miners advance their projects through the study stages with the ultimate intent to actually build the mine. Sometimes they may opt to sell their project if it no longer fits in their long term strategy or if they desperately need some cash. However, selling the project when it was first acquired was likely not their initial intent. They want to be on a Mine Builder path.
If an engineer understands that a Mine Builder’s project will move from PEA to PFS to FS in rapid succession, then there is more incentive to ensure each study is somewhat integrated.
The objective of the Mine Vendor is to make the project attractive to potential buyers. There is less urgency in fast tracking towards detailed engineering.
As an engineer, it is helpful to understand the objectives of the project owner and then tailor the technical studies to meet those objectives. This does not mean low balling costs to make the study a promotional tool. It means focusing on what is important. It means recognizing the path, and what doesn’t need to be engineered in detail at this time. This may save the client time, money, and improve credibility in the long run.
This article is about the benefit of preparing (cutting) more geological cross-sections and the value they bring.
Long sections are aligned along the long axis of the deposit. They can be vertically oriented, although sometimes they may be tilted to follow the dip angle of an ore zone.
Cross-sections are generally the most popular geological sections seen in presentations. These are vertical slices aligned perpendicular to the strike of the orebody. They can show the ore zone interpretation, drill holes traces, assays, rock types, and/or color-coded resource block grades.
When looking at cross-sections, it is always important to look at multiple cross-sections across the orebody. Too often in reports one may be presented with the widest and juiciest ore zone, as if that was typical for the entire orebody. It likely is not typical.
Bench plans (or level plans) are horizontal slices across the ore body at various elevations. In these sections one is looking down on the orebody from above.
3D PDF files can be created by some of the geological software packages. They can export specific data of interest; for example topography, ore zone wireframes, underground workings, and block model information. These 3D files allows anyone to rotate an image, zoom in as needed and turn layers off and on.
The different types of geological sections all provide useful information. Don’t focus only on cross-sections, and don’t focus only on one typical section. Create more sections at different orientations to help everyone understand better.
When I am undertaking a due diligence review or working on a study, very early on I like to have a look at the grade-tonnage information. This could be for the entire deposit resource, within a resource constraining shell, or in the pit design.
However, if the tonnage curve profile resembled the light blue line in this image, with a concave shape, the ore tonnage is decreasing rapidly with increasing cutoff grade. This is generally not a favorable situation.
One complaint I have about reporting mineral resources inside a resource constraining shell is the lack of strip ratio information. This applies whether disclosing a single mineral resource estimate or variable grade-tonnage data.
Regarding mineral resources, one should be required to disclose the waste tonnage and strip ratio when reporting resources inside a constraining shell. The constraining shell and cutoff grade are both based on defined economic factors such as unit mining costs, processing cost, process recoveries, and metal prices. With respect to the mining cost component, the strip ratio is a key aspect of the total mining cost, yet it normally isn’t disclosed.
In 43-101 technical reports, the financial Chapter 22 normally presents the project sensitivities expressed in a spider diagram or a table format.
The primary question to be answered is whether one can mine safely and economically without creating significant impacts on the environment.
Lake Turbidity: Dike construction will need to be done through the water column. Works such as dredging or dumping rock fill will create sediment plumes that can extend far beyond the dike. Is the area particularly sensitive to such turbidity disturbances, is there water current flow to carry away sediments?
Pit wall setback: Given the size and depth of the open pit, how far must the dike be from the pit crest? Its nice to have 200 metre setback distance, but that may push the dike out into deeper water.
Once the approximate location of the dike has been identified, the next step is to examine the design of the dike itself. Most of the issues to be considered relate to the geotechnical site conditions.
Each mine site is different, and that is what makes mining into water bodies a unique challenge. However many mine operators have done this successfully using various approaches to tackle the challenge.