SLR Consulting on full value chain mining: integrated design lessons for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
SLR Consulting’s mining sector lead for Africa and the Middle East, Angus Bracken, argues that sustainability decisions must be based on integrated insight across the full value chain, from conceptual scoping through operations to closure. He points to linking mine design, tailings and waste rock strategies, water and energy balances, and closure landforms in a single decision framework, rather than treating ESG, permitting and technical studies as separate workstreams. For engineers, this means earlier trade-off studies on haul profiles, processing routes and residue storage options to avoid costly redesign late in the project cycle.
Technical Brief
- SLR’s mining team in Africa–Middle East is led by sector head Angus Bracken.
Our Take
Africa and the Middle East feature heavily in our Mining coverage for project execution and permitting risk, so SLR Consulting positioning itself around full value chain sustainability in these regions likely reflects client demand for integrated ESG and technical advisory rather than stand‑alone environmental studies.
Within the 1,695 tag‑matched pieces on Projects and Sustainability, most items focus on single‑asset case studies; an op‑ed from SLR Consulting signals that large advisory firms are moving to shape strategy narratives, not just provide compliance‑driven inputs at feasibility or ESIA stage.
Our database shows many of the AI and artificial intelligence‑tagged Mining stories are tied to optimisation and monitoring; if SLR Consulting is embedding similar tools into value chain insight for Africa and the Middle East, operators there could use this to de‑risk water, tailings and energy footprints earlier in project design.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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