Benchmarking on forward selling, off take agreements from mineral raw materials




The Challenge of Material origination from the mining industry and being compliant based for international companies

In the 21st Century new Supply of minerals are crucial for high performance industries such as the new industrial phenomena the Battery energy storage for grid and for electric vehicles. Advanced technologies with high purity grades are indispensable to support the fast-growing demand. Aviation, microchip developments are also in large requirements for high grade raw materials as drones, robotics, automation processes are exponentially growing.

The supplying industry, mineral companies (mining and processing), are interested to cover the growing demands of the growing industries with high quality raw material. Not all mineral companies have a full integrated process facility from mine to an end product to offer in the market.
The market shows that countries like Africa are often exporting their minerals to the Middle east or even Europe and are further sold to China, America, Europe for further processing, whereas origination and compliance is a still overlooked. 
Large overseas processing companies are present in the African Countries and buying from Artisanal & Small Mines (ASM) directly and exporting it to their process facilities overseas.
The origination issues are still not measurable and compliance issues are not resolved yet. ASM have proven not to comply to environmental standards nor labour law, mine Governance and the danger of Child & forced Labour issues and it is a big WHY? Nobody really cares, but everybody talks about compliance.

We need transparency and an awarding appreciation to those who spend huge resources, time, commitment and Research & developments into the compliance of mining, pre-& main processing facilities, CSR, no Child and Forced labor.
With the implementation of ECO MINING, International Compliance based companies have now an infrastructure available through a Star system, where each star represents a mile stone, to purchase, off take.

Actually, the main impact for this ECO MINE is to facilitate a basic tool, assessment to facilitate hedging or off take facility for Mine, Processing companies who are seeking development Funds of their growth in the Upstream or Downstream developments.

Private equity funds can easily measure a company by its ECO MINE Certification. It will reduce the risk of fraud, non-performance and compliance. Each year the companies will be audited and an official report from international audit company will be issued together with STERN. Continuous improvement is the essential idea of this certification and to integrate the management to identify and make the assessment and improve.

Eco Mine Certification is integrated into the management bottom up type and not like all other Certification a one-way communication, a passive tool on a piece of paper. The audit will as well focus on the departments with their Assessment & Measure & improvements.

Enterprise Resource Planning is one of the tools companies will need to implement to boost their communication and implementation skills for small, medium and large-scale companies. Automation and measurements of the equipment will be a part of the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) integrated into the ERP to monitor efficiency and profitability.

Different business variations between Mine owner and Market
Eco Mine will define the compliance, which will result in higher market prices 


11th of September 2018
Raymond Malcolm Oei
oei@sternasia.com









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