NARROW VEIN AND LOW PROF ILE MINING
Surgical M ining pitch finds it s audience
Having been in the field over five times in the last 12 months with its Sur gical Mining™ technology
,
Novamera has a busy 2025 on its hands, CEO Dustin Angelo told IM on the sidelines of Resourcing Tomorr ow, in London, recently
.
Speaking to Angelo just before Kuya Silver announced a Letter of Intent with Novamera to deploy the Surgical Mining process from surface at the company’ s Bethania mine in Peru, Angelo said the“ precursor” projects the company had been engaged on in 2024 were both proving out Novamera’ s process as well as adding value for its customers.
“ These were demonstrating our core, downhole imaging technology and adding value to the customer because they were getting detailed information about their deposit in a discretee ar ea,” he said.“ We look at these as precursors to potential Surgical Mining projects with those customers as they use the imaging tool to efficiently upgrade their understanding of the shape, orientation and geometry of their orebody before developing a Surgical Mining project.”
All five of the projects – three of which were with juniors, one of which was with a mid-tier gold miner and the last of which was with a major miner – saw the company deploy its imaging tool on existing surface coring drill rigs.
This imaging tool – a proprietary technology – allows companies to image the orebody in high resolution. It is part of a Surgical Mining setup that, in the initial proof of concept, was made up of three steps. This includes drilling a hole with a standard NQ-sized diamond core rig and sending the imaging tool down through the core barrel on a wireline to image the orebody in high resolution and with close spacing; bringing in a large-diameter drill, coupled with the company’ s course correction device and positioning control system, to extract to depth following the trajectory provided by the imaging tool and transporting the cuttings using reverse circulation air-lift assist; and backfilling the holes thereafter.
The process is billed as generating circa-95 % less waste and less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of selective mining methods, according to Novamera. In addition, a closed-loop system is employed to minimise water discharge, and real-time backfilling reduces environmental impact and tailings storage needs.
A low capital expenditure solution requiring minimal mine development, Surgical Mining presents miners with a flexible, efficient and scalable mining method that can help get into ore quickly with small-scale deposits, it says. It has typically been applied to narrow-vein, near-surface deposits to this point but there is an underground market
“ That’ s the beauty of the technology,” Angelo says of this allas well that could be developed in the long term.
important imaging tool.“ The way we’ ve developed it is that you don’ t have to modify those rigs; we just show up and the tool snaps into place and off you go.”
This has been particularly useful given the number of projects the
company has worked on since the initial proof of concept trial in 2021 – demonstrating the technology across the Americas and for the likes of
Va
ale, OZ Minerals( now BHP) and others. The imaging tool itself has been reworked over these years, with the
Novamer a’ s Surgical Mining technology is billed as generating cir
ca- 95 % less waste and less than half the greenhouse gas emissions of selective mining methods
`company now having a“ generation one” commercial unit ready to be deployed, according to Angelo.
“ What we’ ve been using in the field in 2024, and previously, is what we’ ve called our minimum viable product,” he explained.
“ There are some really important features on board‘ generation one’. Probably the biggest one is that we’ ve created a mechanical system – basically a‘ packer’ – to help displace water in the hole. This is both more cost effective and efficient than the mud we were using beforehand, allowing us to up the pace of the work, as well as reduce the cost to the client.
“ We’ ve also done a lot of internal work with the guts of the tool, the hardware, and integrating that hardware with the software and AI / machine learning onto a single platform to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data interpretation.”
This work is very timely considering the year that lies ahead for the company.
The project at Kuya Silver could see the miner add over 100 t / d of production to its existing underground mining base at Bethania with the use of Novamera’ s Surgical Mining process.
The Bethania resource area consists of a swarm of structurally- controlled silver-polymetallic veins, many of which extend to surface. Novamera’ s mining solution is well suited to the geology at Bethania, drilling large diameter holes from surface targeting vein mineralisation, Kuya says. The resulting broken rock recovered consists of mineralised material like what would be mined using conventional underground mining methods.
On top of providing these services, Novamera has agreed to source the upfront capital required for the project, which is expected to be in the order of $ 4-4.5 million, to be repaid from project cash flows, after which Kuya Silver has agreed to pay Novamera a revenue share( capped at a $ 50 / oz silver price).
Angelo says the company has been working on a model like this for some time, realising junior miners are finding it hard to access the debt or equity markets to fund this type of work.
“ This model gives the miners a chance to access early revenue and provides us a great chance to showcase our technology,” he said.
64 International Mining | APRIL 2025