Geomechanics.io

Latrobe Magnesium has produced its first sustainable magnesium oxide at a demonstration plant in Hazelwood North, Victoria, using proprietary technology to extract magnesium from Latrobe Valley brown coal fly ash. The process targets commercial production of both magnesium metal and supplementary cementitious material (SCM)-grade by-products, aiming to replace imported magnesia and reduce cement clinker content. For geotechnical and concrete practitioners, locally sourced MgO and SCM from waste ash could alter binder specifications, shrinkage control strategies, and durability mix designs in eastern Australia.

Auric Mining has reported $10.8 million in revenue from its first Munda gold campaign near Widgiemooltha, Western Australia, signalling robust early-stage performance from the open-pit operation. Premier1 Lithium and Flynn Gold also released strong exploration results from their lithium and gold projects respectively, adding momentum to drilling programmes across multiple greenfield and brownfield tenements. For mine planners and geotechs, the cashflow from Munda’s initial phase strengthens the case for further resource definition drilling, pit optimisation and potential expansion studies in the Widgiemooltha district.

Australian Strategic Materials has agreed to sell a further 60 tonnes of high‑purity neodymium‑iron‑boron (NdFeB) alloy to US magnet producer Noveon, deepening its offtake relationship and supporting plans to develop US operations. The NdFeB alloy, produced at ASM’s Korean Metals Plant (KMP), targets high‑performance permanent magnet applications in electric vehicles and wind turbines, where tight compositional control and low impurity levels are critical. For mining and processing players, the move signals continued downstream integration from rare earth oxide production into alloy and magnet supply chains linked to US demand.

Rio Tinto chief executive Simon Trott has signalled a sharpened operational focus across the company’s global portfolio, consolidating capital and management attention on its highest-margin iron ore, copper and aluminium assets. The strategy points to tighter discipline on non-core or underperforming operations, with divestments or joint ventures likely where projects cannot meet internal hurdle rates or decarbonisation pathways. For geotechnical and mining teams, this suggests stronger scrutiny of strip ratios, orebody continuity and tailings liabilities when competing for sustaining and growth capital.

Rio Tinto chief executive Simon Trott is targeting $5–10 billion from divestments and productivity gains by 2030, narrowing the portfolio to iron ore, copper, aluminium and lithium while cutting annual group capex to below $10 billion from 2028 and trimming decarbonisation spend to $1–2 billion through 2030. Non-core assets on the block include titanium dioxide, borates, land, infrastructure and processing facilities, with unit costs targeted to fall 4% between 2024 and 2030. Copper output is forecast at 860,000–875,000 tonnes in 2025, rising toward a 1 Mtpa target by 2030, while Simandou’s ramp-up is now guided at only 5–10 Mt of iron ore sales in 2026.

Rio Tinto’s Nuton venture has produced its first 99.99% copper cathode using proprietary sulphide bioleaching at Gunnison Copper’s Johnson Camp Mine in Arizona, just 18 months after starting work on site. The four-year demonstration aims to deliver about 30,000 tonnes of refined copper from the existing heap leach pad, with Nuton’s microorganisms in bioreactors achieving up to 85% recovery while eliminating milling, tailings, smelting and off-site refining. Gunnison’s 25-million-lb-per-year operation, with a 15–20-year mine life, is now focused on multi-year technical validation, third-party verification and Rio Tinto internal review.

McEwen Mining reports that new drilling at the Froome mine in northern Ontario has increased the high-grade gold zone by about 45%, with hole 25PR-G467 returning 31 metres at 7.7 g/t from 298 metres and 25PR-G478 cutting 15 metres at 6.1 g/t from 328 metres. Mineralisation has been extended 100 metres vertically and up to 50 metres west in the Froome West zone, remains open at depth, and is being tested by four active surface diamond rigs. Continued success could support concurrent mining at Froome and the planned Stock mine from mid-2026, ahead of an updated Froome West resource due in February.

Copper’s surge above $11,000/t on the LME, including a record $11,540/t print, is unlikely to persist, with Goldman Sachs analysts led by Aurelia Waltham projecting 2025 prices constrained to a $10,000–$11,000/t range and a modest 2026 surplus of about 160,000 t. The bank sees no structural global shortage before at least 2029, noting 2025 demand remains roughly 500,000 t below supply and warning that Chinese consumption could fall nearly 8% year-on-year in Q4. Mercuria’s Kostas Bintas, by contrast, flags “extreme” market dislocations from US-bound flows that could leave non-US markets short of copper cathodes.

Anglo Asian Mining has completed its first copper concentrate sale from the new Demirli mine in Karabakh to Trafigura, delivering 2,055 wet tonnes containing 351 tonnes of copper metal under a contract that includes a $25 million prepayment facility. The shipment, expected to generate $3.6 million in revenue before the Azerbaijani state’s share, was handled via a newly established logistics centre near Ganja on the Azerbaijan–Georgia highway to avoid restricted access into Karabakh. Demirli, commissioned in July, is forecast to produce 4,000 tonnes of copper concentrate in 2025, rising to 15,000 tonnes from 2026.

Australia’s mining veteran Jake Klein warns the country is “relying on luck rather than good strategy”, citing Lynas Rare Earths’ decision to build its main processing plant in Malaysia after a 10-year tax holiday and gas-to-site offer, while Australian governments provided no comparable support. He argues Australia forfeited early leadership in rare earths, with Mt Weld ore still shipped offshore and key processing IP now based in Malaysia, and notes Lynas’ newer cracking plant in Kalgoorlie is hampered by unreliable power. Klein links short three‑year federal election cycles, shrinking university mining programmes and high labour and power costs to declining competitiveness, urging long-term policy, investment in mining education and technology, and aggressive adoption of AI under the new National AI Plan to lift productivity.

Larvotto Resources has installed an ECORE automated drill core scanner at its Hillgrove antimony-gold project in New South Wales, making it the only mine site in Australia with laser ablation–atomic emission spectroscopy core scanning in near real time. The Elemission Inc. system generates quantitative multi-element and mineral maps immediately after drilling, enabling rapid identification of mineralised zones, alteration halos and textural controls to refine geological logging, sampling and metallurgical testwork. Hillgrove is now near production, with first output targeted for Q2 next year and a stated aim to supply up to 7% of global antimony demand.

CERN Council has declared the CHF15bn Future Circular Collider technically feasible, clearing a major hurdle for a 90.7km circumference tunnel with access shafts between 180m and 400m deep across eight surface sites, seven in France and one in Switzerland. The feasibility review drew on around 1,500 experts from 162 institutes in 38 countries, with no technical “showstoppers” identified so far. Recommendations under the European Strategy for Particle Physics will be finalised by May 2026, with a construction decision expected around 2028, signalling a potential decade-scale tunnelling and underground works programme.

Breakthrough of Herrenknecht Single Shield TBMs “Lilia” and “Ida” in Brenner Base Tunnel section H41 Sill Gorge–Pfons marks completion of two 10.25 m diameter, 4,550 kW drives totalling over 16.5 km of twin main tunnels excavated and segmentally lined since mid‑2023. The 2,400‑tonne, 160 m long machines, operated by ARGE H41 (Implenia, Webuild, CSC), bring Herrenknecht’s driven length under the Brenner towards 90 km, with two 10.33 m Double Shield TBMs still advancing on lot H53. Herrenknecht is also supplying segment formwork systems, VMT navigation and ring sequencing, and multi‑kilometre H+E conveyor belts, consolidating a full-process mechanised delivery model.

TAC’s 2025 awards at the Vancouver workshop named the Eglinton Crosstown West Extension Advance Tunnel Contract 1 as Canadian Project of the Year over C$300m and the Annacis Island Wastewater Treatment Plant Outfall Project as Project of the Year under C$300m, recognising major urban transit and deep outfall tunnelling works. The Canadian Innovation Initiative went to dynamic adaptative innovation on the Fairbank Silverthorn Tunnel Project, signalling growing interest in real‑time design and construction optimisation. Individual awards went to Young Tunneller Jonathan D Aubertin, Tunneller of the Year Curtis John Bahten, and Lifetime Achievement recipient Frank Huber.

TBM Mullai has broken through into Kolathur Station North shaft after a 246 m drive from Kolathur Ramp, negotiating just 1.8 m overburden, a -3.8% gradient and ground protection works beneath heavy traffic. Simultaneously, TBM Kurinji has been launched from Kolathur South shaft to excavate a 1,060 m tunnel to Srinivasa Nagar station through Grade 4–5 rock and a 230 m curve, a first in India for a same-station launch and breakthrough. The works form part of Chennai Metro Phase 2 Corridor 5, a 47 km line with 5.8 km underground and 41.2 km elevated, using four TBMs.

Tunnelling for Delhi Metro’s Janakpuri West–RK Ashram Marg extension has completed the downline bore between Pulbangash and Sadar Bazar directly beneath the operational Red Line viaduct, which carries about 700,000 passengers daily. To protect the viaduct’s open foundations and balanced cantilever spans without halting traffic, engineers executed tube a manchette grouting through 180 TAM boreholes and installed dense instrumentation including surface settlement markers, deep inclinometers, pier tilt meters, building settlement points and load cells. Continuous real-time monitoring by dedicated staff kept ground movement, pier behaviour and building responses within permissible limits, and the upline tunnel is now being driven under the same regime.

Terratec’s T83B open TBM on the Mumbai water tunnel project achieved 752m advance in July 2025, claimed as a national record for a water tunnel drive using a single rail track and two mining locomotives. The cutterhead configuration, integrated ground support systems and operational flexibility have matched the alignment’s geology, sustaining high penetration and consistent progress. Productivity gains also stem from tightly planned logistics and cross‑shift co‑ordination, backed by Terratec field service engineers embedded with the contractor’s tunnelling team.

President Marcos has inaugurated Tunnel No. 5 in Bulacan, a new conveyance tunnel feeding the Umiray–Angat–Ipo–La Mesa system that supplies almost 90% of water to nearly 20 million people in Metro Manila, Bulacan, and parts of Cavite and Rizal. The tunnel adds 1.6 billion litres per day of capacity, lifting system throughput from about 6 billion to almost 8 billion litres per day from Angat Dam. Marcos credited concessionaires Maynilad and Manila Water and project teams at the Bigte Basin site in Norzagaray.

Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel has opened twin 9km rail tunnels with five new underground stations, doubling the city’s underground network and cutting cross-city journeys from Arden to Anzac to 12 minutes. Built by the Cross Yarra Partnership (Capella Capital, Lendlease, John Holland, Bouygues and John Laing) after its 2015 announcement, construction required excavation of 1.8 million m³ of rock and soil, 754,000m³ of concrete, 157,000 tonnes of steel and 140km of track. Travel is free on the network at weekends during December and January, with the West Gate road tunnel targeted to open by year-end.

Scottish Water has completed tunnelling works on a £13m scheme in Stirlingshire, installing twin 0.5m-diameter pressurised wastewater pipes over a 4km route between Plean and Cowie to support new housing. A 56m section at 4m depth beneath the M9 motorway was installed by pipe ramming, while an 8m-deep, 46m crossing under the main Glasgow–Stirling railway used rock auger drilling in harder ground. Continuous 24/7 working and a co-ordinated multi-agency approach limited disruption to both the motorway and live railway.

TBM Than Toc (Speedy God), a 6.6m-diameter, 100m-long, 850t Herrenknecht machine operated by Ghella, has broken through at Station S12 (Hanoi Station) after a 4km drive installing 1,720 precast segments on Hanoi Metro Line 3. The 12.5km Pilot Light Line 3, Hanoi’s first underground metro, comprises 8.5km of elevated track, 4km of twin-bore tunnels and four underground stations between Nhon and Hanoi Station, and is now over 72% complete. A second TBM, Tao Bao, is currently advancing towards Station S11, maintaining underground excavation momentum.

The Centenary Motorway crossing of the Brisbane River at Jindalee has been expanded from four to six lanes, with a new three‑lane northbound bridge now open and the existing structures rehabilitated to carry three southbound lanes. The upgrade removes a key bottleneck on this major radial route into Brisbane, materially changing traffic loading patterns and redundancy across the twin structures. For designers and asset managers, the project signals a shift from single to duplicated river crossings, with implications for inspection regimes, maintenance access and future flood resilience strategies.

Former Barratt Developments regional managing director Gary Ennis has been appointed chief executive of Untypical, the new brand combining Hopkins Homes and Tilia Homes owned by Guy Hands’ Terra Firma Capital Partners. Ennis, who ran Barratt’s London and southeast division until September 2024, will be based in Solihull from 8 December, despite no Untypical corporate entity yet being registered at Companies House. The delayed merger of Hopkins and Tilia, first announced in October 2024, remains incomplete, leaving governance and integration timelines unclear for supply chains and project partners.

Gary Bushnell has been appointed managing director of Robertson Capital Projects (RCP) after 10 years as chief executive of Hub East Central Scotland, with Robertson’s pre-construction director Brian Craig moving to replace him at Hub. RCP, based in Stirling alongside Hub East Central Scotland, will use design–build–fund–maintain models and private finance structures to progress social and community infrastructure, regeneration schemes and housing. Bushnell’s remit centres on upgrading public sector estates to meet net zero requirements while enabling projects constrained by tight public budgets to proceed.