I am often asked by my customers, after conducting a site audit and making recommendations for improvement, how much am I going to save? The answer to this is much more complex than merely quoting a percentage of savings. Saving money in the overall blasting operation, is not necessarily a good thing, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. The real question should be; - How much money am I going to save over my whole mining process?
This can result in a much more tangible amount. The total production costs are composed of drilling, blasting, secondary breakage of oversize, digging, haulage, crushing & milling. The overall impact of poor blast results on the mining cycle can be huge, but when it comes to blasting, mines often want to reduce costs in this aspect only. This is not unusual, but does not mean it is correct. Having said that, the other major input costs to the overall operating costs are much more difficult to control, e.g. Diesel, electrical power (both often fixed prices determined by statutory organisations) and Labours costs (where a longer term view to reduce these is required). So rather than look at means to improve overall productivity, companies often tend to look at explosives to reduce their overall costs without considering the downstream impact of poor blast results. This will generally mean either calling in the explosives supplier to renegotiate prices, or by instructing the drill & blast team to reduce their powder factors, normally the latter can result in additional costs being incurred by the production team.