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In the News - NextOre*† Raises A$2.0m in private funding for disruptive technology

Published: 08:22 17 Jun 2019 BST

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Natural Resources

17 June 2019

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NextOre*

Raises A$2.0m in private funding for disruptive technology

NextOre has raised $2.0m in a private funding round primarily to ramp up manufacturing and sales of its flagship bulk ore sorting sensor system. NextOre is a company spun out of CSIRO that applies sophisticated sensing technology for mining. NextOre’s products apply Magnetic Resonance (MR) technology to deliver second-by-second information about raw ore that miners can use for real-time decision making.

Copper-detecting MR Analysers have been installed at mines across the globe including Latin America and Australia, with more scheduled for installation this year. While NextOre is focusing initially on copper sorting applications, the MR technology is applicable to a list of other commodities including iron ore and gold. Funds raised will be used to grow the company’s global footprint from its existing customer base.

NextOre is the second partnership between CSIRO and RFC Ambrian delivering disruptive technologies to the mining industry and the two are joined in this partnership by Advisian Digital, Worley’s data science, software and technology business focused on developing a portfolio of advanced digital solutions for industry. The founding shareholders have been joined in the current funding round by sophisticated private investors.

COMMENT: This truly disruptive technology is the result of nearly 15 years of research and development carried out by CSIRO Minerals Resources.

NextOre’s MR technology allows for the pre-concentration of ore on a conveyor belt before it is fed to the processing plant at throughput rates up to 5,000tph per conveyor. Pre-concentration of ore is not new but has only ever been successful in the past at low product volumes or has required additional material handling steps. Previously it could not be achieved because no systems existed which could reliably measure the grade of volumes of broken material at the speeds and throughput required.

Bulk ore sorting is an emerging technology but is now reaching commercialisation and the fastest and most accurate, magnetic resonance (MR), is also capable of allowing sorting of mine output, rejecting waste and/or low-grade material and allowing high grade feed to the plant. The MR sensor is well suited to a bulk ore sorting application, as it is penetrative and can measure large volumes on fully loaded conveyor belts or heaped in trucks. The measurement response time from MR is very rapid, meaning smaller volumes of ore can be measured and a higher resolution of sorting can be achieved for bulk ore sorting applications.

 

Without exception, global diversified miners are all investigating the application of pre-concentration to their operations. The potential value impact of effectively applying pre-concentration is too significant to ignore. With this technology, miners will be able to mine more intelligently. They’ll produce more metal using smaller, more efficient plants that consume less electricity, water and chemicals in the process. 

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