Chapter 33Freeport-McMoRan turns data into value
A copper mining business's AI transformation journey
Freeport-McMoRan has a reputation as a savvy operator in the mining industry. The company operates a fleet of relatively mature, large-scale copper mines in the Americas, which means that the company's performance is highly leveraged to global copper prices: in a high price environment they generate significant cash, but at the bottom of the price cycle, some of the mines struggle to break even.
The company's expectations for growth required significant capital and lengthy permitting and construction efforts. Seeking another path, Freeport turned to artificial intelligence (AI) to see if it was possible to get more out of the assets they already had.
Over a five-year journey, the company successfully designed and executed its “Americas Concentrator” program to unlock the equivalent of an entire processing facility's worth of incremental annual copper production through the use of big data, AI, and agile. No new capital deployment was required.
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