Review of cut-off grade optimisation from Southern African mines. Student assignment based observations

Some commodities and mining methods lend themselves to cut-off grade optimisation. However, it is noted that many mines focus on determining the cut-off grade just on the basic break-even grade and Lane's algorithm and do not optimise the cut-off considering other factors like volume or net present value. There is some evidence of optimisation considering the volume/cost relationship to identify the 'hill of value'. The Whittle Optimiser as well as the Lerchs-Grossman algorithm is applied for some of the open pit mines reviewed and the optimisation is focused on the NPV. Few, if any of the latest optimisation approaches, are found applied on the mines at operational level reviewed by this exercise.