An interview with Luke Sandery, Principal Advisor to the CEO at OZ Minerals

OZ Minerals – A modern mining company

OZ Minerals is Mining3’s newest member and we caught up with Luke Sandery, their Principal Advisor to the CEO to gain some insights into the organisation and their views on Mining3. Their tagline – A modern mining company – already provides insight into why they decided to join the group and work towards accelerating solutions to industry identified challenges.

OZ Minerals is an Australian based mining company focused on copper. They have operations in South Australia and Brazil. With a strong emphasis on innovation, they encourage all employees to put forward ideas for any level of transformation, and utilise an internal system to capture their ideas for consideration and implementation.

So why did OZ Minerals become a member of Mining3? The initial engagement began as a query for Mining3’s tramp metal project – Uncrushables. OZ Minerals was searching for a solution to tramp metal obstruction in crushers causing both infrastructure damage and processing delays.

It was from this engagement that OZ Minerals became aware of the Mining3 membership and realised the value it offered in leveraging their R&D funds. Luke said, “We have fewer sites to test and develop new technology, so in-house research and development isn’t always feasible. Having the ability to combine our research dollars with those within the group and having access to near-commercial and emerging technology made good business sense.”

“We liked the breadth of projects available which covered areas we needed solutions for as well as areas we hadn’t even thought about.”

In addition, having access to Mining3’s research partners – CSIRO, Curtin University, Queensland University of Technology and The University of Queensland – was a huge motivating factor.

Luke will be one of the mining representatives on the Mining3 Research Committee, Technical Committees and Board. He believes this is an additional motivating factor for OZ Minerals joining Mining3 as it gives them the opportunity to shape new and existing projects and the future strategy of Mining3. Mining3 welcomes Luke Sandery and OZ Minerals.