Early-stage water management embedded in mine design, rather than retrofitted later, is being pushed by Marnus Koorts, Director of Capital and Process at Weir, as a core variable alongside throughput and grind size. Koorts argues that integrating water balances, tailings deposition plans and pump/sump layouts from concept study stage cuts risk of flooding, unplanned dewatering and costly rework. For engineers, this means specifying pipelines, thickeners and water-recovery circuits in initial flowsheets, not as bolt-ons once pit expansion or TSF instability exposes gaps.

ICMM has appointed Froydis Cameron-Johansson as its next President and CEO, effective 23 November 2026, succeeding Rohitesh Dhawan after more than five years in the role. Cameron-Johansson brings senior global leadership experience from major mining houses, positioning her to influence ICMM’s work on tailings governance, Scope 3 emissions and responsible sourcing standards across its 26 member companies. Leadership continuity at ICMM matters for operators because its frameworks often feed directly into site-level ESG criteria, investor due diligence, and permitting expectations.

Bergbau has launched its Planning Agent, an AI-driven mine planning tool that converts plain-language instructions into mine designs, production schedules and reports. In a training demonstration, the system processed a full study from block model through optimisation, pit or stope design, sequencing and resource-constrained scheduling to final reporting in about one working day. For planners, this points to rapid iteration on scenarios and reduced manual hand-offs between traditional packages, while still relying on engineers to validate geotechnical, haulage and processing assumptions.