Resources

Mining traditionally has been a strong primary producer in the Australian economy, contributing around 5.6% of the nation’s GDP and returning consistently healthy dividends for investors. It is not surprising that governments are increasingly looking at the resources industry to drive economic growth.

Rising prices for precious and base metals have translated into sustained growth and profit increases for mining companies. The current boom has also attracted billions of dollars of investment.

Behind the impressive earnings, mining is rapidly changing and becoming increasingly complex:

• Securing access to high quality assets is more challenging than ever and requires an ability to work effectively with governments, communities and joint venture partners
• Access to geological, technical and commercial excellence must be maintained in an increasingly competitive market
• Huge project portfolios and cap-ex budgets demand rigorous strategic planning, yet uncertain future prices mean that ultimately companies must take risks. Companies lower this exposure by investing in supporting commodity demand
• Managing geographically distant and diverse projects from the Arctic to the mountains of Chile is demanding new technology and processes. Ensuring quality and mitigating risk in these locations adds an additional layer of pressure
• Mining skills are scarce and getting good people to operate existing mines and develop new projects is difficult

Increasingly the resources industry is global in nature and companies are constantly assessing challenges against competitive returns. Long-term winners will be the resources groups that can deliver more mineral at the lowest effective unit cost, and therefore deliver the highest value from their investments. Businesses must increasingly extract extra returns by improving operating performance and increasing the effectiveness and efficiencies of the each of the key elements of their supply chain, no easy task.

Ever more adaptive workforces require better collaboration and knowledge sharing models and importantly these gains are driven by the design and application of better IT platforms, systems integration, smarter networks and dynamic mobile technologies, expertise Oakton has been building for many years now.

Oakton’s resources consulting experience

For over twenty years Oakton has in this challenging environment advised resources companies on consulting and technology projects to help deliver strategies with impact and effective implementation to achieve both near-term and long-term results.

In the last 12 months we’ve created tangible value for Wesfarmers Resources, Reliance Petroleum, BP International and MacArthur Coal.

To find out more about Oakton’s expertise in this area, please contact Jorge Alla