Reimagining the mineral discovery life cycle: what is the key to a sustainable future?

In the world of mineral project development, exploration has long been seen as the most challenging phase. It’s a high-risk, high-cost endeavour, often likened to searching for a needle in a geological haystack. Statistically, fewer than one in a thousand exploration projects ever become a producing mine. The reasons are well understood: long timelines, complex permitting, significant capital requirements, and a high degree of technical uncertainty each make the discovery phase the biggest hurdle in successfully developing mineral activity.

Yet, while exploration captures much of the attention, and rightly so for its role in unlocking new resources, it is not where I see the greatest opportunity for transformation. At Wood, we work across the full life cycle of mineral projects, from discovery to delivery. And through that lens, it becomes clear that the biggest opportunity for innovation doesn’t lie at the beginning of the minerals life cycle, but rather further down the line in the mineral processing and refining stage.

Despite often being overlooked in broader conversations, these phases are when we can see a real potential to make an immediate impact on the minerals life cycle. Beyond just being energy-intensive, the processing and refining phases are also environmentally demanding and technically challenging. But here lies the opportunity. Unlike exploration, which is constrained by limited data and external variables, processing and refining are governed by known scientific principles. This makes them ideal candidates for optimisation through the development of new technologies.

Transformation in this space is already beginning to take place, with artificial intelligence being deployed to improve process control across a number of existing projects in real time. Cleaner reagents are also being adopted to reduce the environmental footprint of chemical separation and advanced separation techniques are improving recovery rates while minimising waste. These transformative innovations are leading the pathway for significant reductions in emissions across existing and developing minerals projects. Beyond this, they stand to make big cuts to operating costs, ultimately improving the overall economics of projects.

As the global demand for critical minerals accelerates, the pressure to deliver these resources sustainably and efficiently has never been greater. The industry cannot continue to respond to this with more exploration, but rather with smarter processing and cleaner refining. This will be the key to unlocking a sustainable future for minerals extraction and processing. The future of mining will not be defined solely by what we discover, but by how we process, refine, and deliver it. That’s where the next frontier lies. And that’s where we’re focused.