Mining companies today are under intense pressure to increase their output of base, precious minerals as well as critical minerals, but bringing new production online is neither quick nor easy.
The industry faces a structural squeeze: demand for copper, lithium and other critical minerals is rising faster than new projects can be permitted, financed and built. The International Energy Agency forecast supply gaps of 30% for copper and 40% for lithium by 2035 underscore the urgency, even before factoring in delays tied to permitting, construction and geopolitics. In that context, the most immediate gains may not come from new mines at all, but from extracting more value out of ore already stacked on leach pads.
The conventional route to higher production remains slow and capital intensive. Expansions require feasibility work, regulatory approvals and construction timelines that can stretch well beyond market cycles. By contrast, improving recovery within an existing footprint is one of the few levers operators can pull quickly. It does not replace long-term growth, but it can narrow the gap between supply and demand in the near term.
At the centre of that opportunity is a persistent inefficiency in heap leaching: uneven solution distribution. Variability across a pad—whether from slope, rock size, poor line spacing or pressure inconsistencies—creates wet and dry zones that limit how much metal is actually recovered. These are not marginal losses. Over time, they compound into meaningful production shortfalls that rarely show up clearly in headline metrics.
“The question is not whether solution is applied, but whether it is applied consistently across the entire pad for the full cycle,” operators focused on recovery performance often emphasize. “Without uniform distribution, large portions of the heap can be bypassed entirely.”
That inconsistency exposes one of the industry’s most costly assumptions—that metal missed in one lift will be recovered later. In practice, once fluid begins channeling through preferred pathways, subsequent applications tend to follow the same routes, leaving other zones under-leached. What appears to be delayed recovery is often permanent loss.
The implication is straightforward: recovery is not just a function of time, but of control. Precision irrigation systems that regulate pressure, flow and distribution across large pads offer a way to reduce variability and improve percolation. More uniform delivery allows solution to contact a greater portion of the ore body, increasing overall extraction while also reducing water use—an increasingly important consideration in water-constrained jurisdictions.
This is where operational discipline becomes as important as engineering. Mines that treat heap leaching as a controllable system—rather than a background process—tend to perform better. They invest in monitoring, automate where possible and focus on maintaining consistent conditions across the pad. The result is not just higher recovery, but more predictable outcomes.
The case for doing so is strengthened by broader industry pressures. Labour shortages are intensifying, with more than half of the US mining workforce projected to retire by 2029. That makes manual inspection and adjustment more difficult to sustain, particularly on large-scale operations. Automation and real-time visibility are no longer optional upgrades; they are becoming necessary tools to maintain performance.
What is often overlooked in discussions about future supply is how much metal is already within reach. The industry is rightly focused on new projects and critical mineral strategies, but it risks underestimating the volume that could be unlocked through better execution at existing sites. Incremental gains in recovery, applied across large operations, can translate into significant increases in output.
That is the core argument: the fastest production gains available to mining today are not buried in undeveloped deposits, but sitting in plain sight on current leach pads. Improving how those pads are managed will not solve the supply challenge on its own, but it offers a practical, immediate way to ease it.
** Tom Claridge is sales manager, Mining North, Netafim North America
