The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) has launched an interactive tool called the Closure Maturity Framework that will help mining and metals companies establish a clearer view of their asset’s current levels of maturity on the road to achieving sustainable mine closure. The tool will assist them in understanding what future work is needed to achieve their closure objectives with the goal of driving continuous improvement in closure performance.
The Closure Maturity Framework is designed to help companies map their current position, motivate improvement and measure the state of their operations’ progress toward sustainable closure. It outlines a pathway toward achieving desired post-closure land uses and closure vision while considering relevant aspects of mine design, operations and technology.
“To achieve sustainable outcomes that are beneficial to a company and its employees, the environment and host communities, mine closure must be considered as an integral part of an operations’ core business and effectively integrated across the mining life cycle,” ICMM COO Aidan Davy said.
The Closure Maturity Framework tool has two components: a user guide that describes each of the maturity levels and helps companies categorize the status of their sites, and an interactive Excel tool that helps companies assess closure maturity at the site level.
ICMM said it can serve as a communication tool that drives conversation between different business units and levels of a company to converge thinking and align decision making. It can also facilitate the aggregation of results from multiple sites to enable companies to understand closure performance within a portfolio.
