Customer Success Story: MineMarket & GAC

Want to optimise your mining operations?

Discover how GAC streamlined operations, reduced manual processes, and positioned their business for Industry 4.0 by deploying Datamine’s MineMarket solution.

Guinea Alumina Corporation (GAC) is the bauxite mining subsidiary of Emirates Global Aluminium, the world’s largest ‘premium aluminium’ producer. Located in northwest Guinea, GAC’s 690 km² operation holds nearly 400 million tonnes of bauxite resources and employs over 3,000 people.

Integrated Mine-to-Market Operation

From their mine near Sangaredi in the Boké province, GAC hauls ore 90 km by rail to port facilities in Kamsar. At port, automated systems unload, stack, and rehandle ore for shipment via barges to global customers.

Key Infrastructure Highlights

One of the largest African mining infrastructure projects
Car dumpers, stacker/reclaimers, barge conveyors
Direct barge-to-vessel transshipment 37 km offshore

THE CHALLENGE

Before implementing MineMarket, GAC’s operations were heavily reliant on spreadsheets and manual processes.

This approach had several limitations:

No systematic data management

Up to 30 labour hours daily spent on collecting, cleansing, and validating operational data

Duplication of effort between mine planners and contractors

Delay in generating stockpile and daily movement reports

Limited real-time visibility across mine, processing, rail, port, and shipping

The solution

Potential Benefits

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Standardised business processes:
One system for inventory management from mine to vessel

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Automation and efficiency:
- Eliminate up to 30 person-hours of manual data entry per day - Reduce time for daily block data reconciliation down to 1 hour

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Real-time inventory control:
Live tracking of blocks, ROM, post-crushing stocks, railing, port, and shipping

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Improved commercial outcomes:
- Early insight into stockpile balances and grade - Reduced out-of-specification shipment penalties and port rehandling costs.

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Redeployment of workforce time:
Redirect employee effort to continuous improvement initiatives

‘Apart from fixing data source issues, … the system is completely automated, which saves effort and provides stockpile balance and grade information on average 15 hours earlier than [the] previous manual process.’

Heinrich Armand Greyling - GAC IMS Project Manager

THE RESULTS AND FUTURE PLANS