Challenge

Cave mining is moving into deeper, hotter, higher-stress and more complex orebodies, where traditional approaches to design, establishment and operation are being pushed to their limits. Future cave mines will need to be safer, more productive, more sustainable and increasingly digitally connected, autonomous and de-manned. The challenge is too large for any single company to solve alone: the caving community is highly specialised, the number of experienced practitioners is limited, and many of the technical problems are shared across operations, commodities and regions.

Solution

The second phase, or Horizon 2, of the Cave Mining 2040 consortium has been established to address eight priority research themes identified by members as critical to the next generation of cave mining:

• Block Cave benchmarking – compiling and updating global design, operational and safety data for current, recent and proposed block cave mines.

• Caving Major Hazard Management Plans – learning from past incidents and current practice to improve the identification, control and management of major hazards such as footprint instability, rockbursts, airblast and inrushes.

• Modular, staged capital approaches to reduce upfront costs – identifying infrastructure strategies that better match the evolving lifecycle of a block cave footprint and reduce overcapitalisation.

• Rapid cave establishment and early production ramp-up – improving cashflow, establishment schedules, production ramp-up and execution strategies without compromising quality or risk management.

• Innovative footprint designs for deeper caves and increased automation – exploring extraction-level designs, remote and automated tasks, enabling technologies and “zero boots on concrete” concepts for deeper and more challenging cave environments.

• Drawpoint spacing and layouts for optimal life-of-mine extraction – understanding how drawpoint design, drawbell geometry, flow behaviour and draw strategy affect stability, recovery and drawpoint availability.

• Mining method adaptations for high-stress, deep cave environments – developing establishment and operating strategies for deeper caves exposed to higher stress, temperature, water, gas, poorer rock mass conditions and higher draw columns.

• Methods for effective block caving in very high-strength rock – defining the data, design criteria, cave engineering options and hazard-management practices required to safely cave rock masses previously considered too strong for conventional block caving.

The solution is the consortium itself: an established, member-led collaboration that brings together mining companies, OEMs, service providers, researchers and specialist technology organisations to share knowledge, define common problems and co-develop practical research outcomes. Led by Mining3, Cave Mining 2040 provides the structure, governance and technical coordination needed to convert industry-wide challenges into focused projects, shared learnings, validated tools, reference reports and implementation pathways. This collaborative model helps members avoid duplicating effort, learn from global experience, and shape research that is directly relevant to real cave mining decisions.

Horizon 1

Horizon 2 builds on the achievements of Horizon 1, which was shaped by the Cave Mining Industry Workshop held around MassMin 2016 and focused on future cave mining at depths approaching 2,000 metres. By 2022, all six Horizon 1 study areas had been completed and reported to the Executive Steering Committee. Key achievements included best-practice guidance for Total Deposit Knowledge; the RAPID cave establishment decision-support tool and hosted scheduling application; macro-block design and sequencing work supported by more than 750 models and over 200 feasibility guidelines; improved cave front and back tracking using microseismic data; and global sublevel caving benchmarking across 24 operations. Together, these outputs helped close several known knowledge gaps and created a strong foundation for the next horizon of collaborative research.

Call to Action

Mining companies, OEMs, service providers and technology partners are invited to participate in Cave Mining 2040 Horizon 2. By joining the consortium, members can help shape the research agenda, contribute real operational insight, access shared knowledge, trial emerging solutions and work with industry peers to de-risk the future of cave mining. Together, we can accelerate safer, more productive and more sustainable cave mining systems for the next generation of deep, complex orebodies.