Caving 2018: Fourth International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving

Conference website

Conference brochure

The Australian Centre for Geomechanics looks forward to hosting the Fourth International Symposium on Block and Sublevel Caving in Vancouver in October 2018. This follows previous symposia held in Santiago in 2014; Perth, 2010 and Cape Town, 2007.

The growing popularity of caving methods around the world is largely due to the very low production cost and the intrinsic safety associated with the mining approach. It is often the only viable mining method for some of the lower grade massive orebodies that are becoming too deep for open pit mining.

Strategically, most medium and large mining companies are operating or planning to operate a caving mine. Codelco’s El Teniente Mine in Chile and the LKAB’s Kiirunavaara Mine in Sweden are among the largest and most famous caving operations in the world.

Canada’s lead caving operations include New Gold’s New Afton underground block caving mine which seeks to produce an annual average of 75 million pounds of copper and 80,000 ounces of gold over a 12 year mine life. Source: http://www.newgold.com/careers/new-afton-project/careers/default.aspx

Cave mining has become one of the most research intensive areas of mining engineering in recent times. Mining companies need to be kept informed of the latest technological developments from caving research, and researchers require a regular platform to present their results and interact with industry practitioners.

Important dates