Too often, dry stacking or filtered tailings management is dismissed early in the alternatives assessment process due to the high production rates of many projects.
Broadly, the consideration of tailings filtration and dry stacking is becoming more common, as mining operators seek to align with stated best practices. Changes in risk awareness and risk tolerance are encouraging mining companies and stakeholders to seek alternatives to conventional deposition and dry-stacked tailings is often considered a safer, lower risk solution. At the same time, technologies are also catching up to deliver cost savings at economies of scale. However, a singular criterion - high production rate - is often unnecessarily eliminating dry stackings as a viable option, well before the necessary thinking is done on how it might be effectively employed and costed on a project.
