Takeaways on Technology in Mining from the Future Minerals Forum 2025 and the role ERP systems such SAP can play in Mining Exploration

Mahad Hussein

1 – Technology advancements have reduced the gap between projected demand and the supply of the critical minerals, but shortages still expected – McKinsey’s outlook towards 2035 reveals that the expected supply-demand is more balanced compared to their 2023 perspective, but shortages are still anticipated. What I found fascinating is that in the last 24 months, Nickel and Cobalt have shifted from expected undersupply to oversupply. However, in the case of Copper, Zinc and Lithium, McKinsey has found only a slight closing of the gap between 2023 and what is expected for 2025.

The big topic of discussion is what needs to be put in place to close the gap for minerals that are forecasting below the demand curve? One answer put forward by McKinsey is the increasing of prices to incentivise sufficient supply. The other lies in using technology such as AI to accelerate the pace of minerals development.

2 – Use-cases of AI in Mining – as expected, there was a great focus and emphasis placed on the role of AI in the advancement of mining. What was particularly interesting is the various stages of advancement in terms of the use-cases, with some instances already developed (or in advanced stages) and in other cases have not even scratched the surface:

AI in Exploration – labour intensive tasks have a great potential use case for AI with a prediction of reduced exploration costs and increased efficiency. This AI use case directly ties back to the first point mentioned above with reducing the gap between expected demand in 2025 vs the anticipated shortage. This is where the penny drops: if AI helps with reducing the timeframe to complete exploration projects successfully at a rate never seen in the industry, it will give rise to more mining operations in the production phase ahead of 2035. I came across some interesting examples of this at the Future Minerals Forum. A key example was the use of AI in exploration drilling activities. Data collected from drill holes of up to 20,000m deep are analysed and created as models. Algorithms are run to create the best possible scenario model which is then feedback into the drilling process as a continuous improvement activity. A successful instance of this is a Miner that was drilling in the wrong areas and after AI run through the drilling data, it suggested the best possible model and drill area. The Miner found $60M in situ of copper from that AI driven drilling data. AI in exploration is reducing the timeframe to production. I understand from industry experts at the Forum that the average of 10 years to production is now reduced to almost 5 years.
AI in Equipment – so many successful use cases of AI in mining related equipment already exist with more advances to come soon. AI application in safety (collision avoidance and worker monitoring), autonomous vehicles, predictive maintenance and data driven decision making are already in use across the mining landscape.
AI in Sustainability – Sustainability covers a broad area across mining as Miners have taken great interest in environmental and social responsibilities. AI is now playing a role in efficient exploration (targeted drilling to reduce land disruption), waste management, water management and energy optimisation. A key example I came across at the Forum is in the management of power and energy, leveraging AI agents to manage power demand. In essence, AI reads and understands the patterns in energy consumption and finds the optimum to achieve real value cost savings.

What role can ERP systems such as SAP play in Mining Exploration?

ERP for Mining Exploration – I have seen and spoken with Mining companies in the past with only exploration sites. They all share the same themes around the use of ERP systems which are:

Tight budgets – funding is prioritised towards exploration activities, spending on an ERP system at a stage where no revenues are coming in is difficult (without a value case for it that is).
Pressure on securing partnerships to begin construction phase – the focus is on securing joint venture partnerships or capital to move forward from the exploration to the construction phase.
No real value proposition from ERP systems at this stage of mining – the investment exploration miners are making in technology is related to areas such as GIS systems, drillhole analysis software and geological data systems. More recently in AI related software. The ERP systems that are within reach to them are not providing the value they want in terms of improving their exploration activities.

Within Mining companies with a mix of exploration and established production assets, the problem of ERP systems tracking for exploration assets also exists. The conundrum is that a full systems implementation can’t be justified yet for the exploration site in line with the production sites so often the corporate entity will use manual processes to manage reporting and compliance.

Often overlooked is that fact that the ERP system selected must be scalable with the growth of the company’s mining based activities. A company may buy a cheap off the shelf product and then realise as the exploration activities advance quickly, the systems are inadequate to support that point in time growth.

Coming back to SAP, back in 2002, they announced a small to medium sized solution branded as SAP Business One. This was an entry point to capturing this market segment. Similarly, the GROW with SAP and RISE with SAP have also introduced base editions targeting smaller organisations. Taking the same vein of thought, SAP have solutions for the Mining industry which Miners in the Production phase will utilise. The SAP solutions cover areas such AI, Sustainability, Commodity Supply Chain and Intelligent Asset Management. The Mining solutions offered are quite comprehensive and even includes Geological Data Management and Project Lifecycle Management. But how affordable are these solutions for companies in the exploration phase? In other words, how can Exploration phase Mining companies gain the best of these areas without exceeding their budgets? If affordable, how can activities specific to exploration be built into the ERP system? These are all questions I have been pondering on myself and I feel there is a gap that still exists even though so much advancement has been achieved and to my mind, the full tie back to meeting Supply and Demand lies in improving the rate of exploration completion.

If a strong application of ERP system usage shows a value proposition that supports improving exploration activities, exploration miners may begin to spend more on ERP systems and gain value in improving efficiency and cost. No doubt the cloud offerings out there and deployment types provide a range of flexible options, but have all the aspects relating to exploration been prototyped back into the software? Perhaps an add-on / standalone solution that can be leveraged not only by pure play Exploration Miners but those with production assets (without buying into the full suite of mining solutions). An opportunity to express value proposition to Exploration Miners exists here, one that can show a real tie back to speeding exploration activities while maintaining a price point entry that is within reason to the Miners.