Q: What are the main best practices you have introduced into the Mexican mining industry?

JLS: Our main offering to the mining sector is cost reduction by reduction or elimination of reworks. In this industry, mainly in the exploitation stage, analytical measurements are critical and gold yield depends on several variables. Mettler Toledo, through process automation increases efficiency and operator safety. For Mexico, we have developed automation solutions and leaching measurements, and along with Brazil and Chile the country is a global reference for best practices. The key to our success is the way we train our salesforce, who specialize in understanding our client’s process in order to identify their problems and provide a solution, and this has been crucial in differentiating us from our competitors. Also, Mettler Toledo is not in the price-driven market, nor in the volume segment, and as leaders we sell value, which is our business model.

Q: Which example shows how your solutions optimize operations and reduce costs?

JLS: Mettler Toledo is present at all stages of the productivity chain of a mine, from exploration with industrial weighing systems to the mills. For instance, the combination of chlorine and caustic soda is one of the most difficult processes for us and competitors could not conceive how to install an analytical instrument inside the tanks, so we studied the process and established the equipment with the material and a design that was able to resist those settings. Recent research on gold leaching tanks shows that in order to improve extraction, measuring the oxygen concentration during the process increases its efficiency. Ee developed the necessary equipment to measure and control the concentration in the tanks.

CC: Improvement in the leaching or bioleaching process is a new development, so the instrumentation used to support those processes is measured through further measurements and data. Analytics relates to processes. Our philosophy is to show operators how to evolve from traditional control to an online based process control, which allows mining companies to reduce losses, focus human resource efficiency, and obtain more control. Analytics solutions, simply explained, are real-time measurements, and even though the mining industry has seen impressive development, operators are extremely traditional and fear automation because this means having to make real-time decisions in critical circumstances. In order to solidify our commitment to client needs Mettler Toledo invests 10 percent of its operative utility in R&D.

Q: What have been Mettler Toledo’s main innovations that revolutionized the mining industry?

JLS: One of the main expenses for mining companies is equipment and infrastructure maintenance, so we developed the iSense (ISM) technology, which involves smart sensors that help analyze the mechanisms in which mining processes occur.

CC: Maintenance has always come at a cost and a few years ago the approach was simply corrective rather than preventive. With our technology, the industry can actually evolve into predictive maintenance. Instead of changing all the pieces that broke the sensors analyze the wear of the equipment, generating savings, and reducing the prevalence of potential downtimes.

Q: What is the relevance of the ultramicrobalance system, and why does the industry need this?

JLS: When studying the viability of a gold mining project, the grain must be evaluated in order to predict production based on the escalation of the sample result. There are some grains from which only 10-20g/t of gold can be extracted, which means a weight difference of only a milligram implies a lot of yield. Mettler Toledo has a Good Weighting Practice initiative that teaches our customers the benefits of weighting with a high precision tool. Therefore, for gold exploitation, the extracted mineral undergoes a treatment to obtain a metal filament that is weighted to the amount of metal in the deposit. Mettler Toledo has an 80 percent market share in the precision weighting segment in Mexico and Minera Frisco, Grupo México, and GoldCorp are among our customers.