Apparently no one was listening a few years ago. That’s when industry watchdogs warned of dire consequences if mining companies continued to ignore technological innovation. Last year, according to Energy, Mines and Resources (EMR), the industry spent a total of $213 million on research and development — the conduit through which ideas flow to become usable engineering tools. While that figure may sound impressive (it is the most the industry has ever spent in one 12-month period), in terms of 1981 dollars, it represents virtually no change over a 7-year period, according to EMR. This, from an industry which cranked out $17.7 billion worth of crude mineral production in 1987, compared to $15.1 billion in 1981. One non-profit mining research organization in Canada which is actually increasing expenditures faster than the rate of inflation and which is seeing results is the Mineral Exploration Research Institute (MERI) in Montreal. “We’re really going to town on this research tax incentive initiative,” MERI Director Joseph Fox tells The Northern Miner Magazine. “There should be no more excuses for the mining industry to be conservative when it come s to research and development.”
Section 37 of the Income Tax Act provides, even after tax reforms introduced by Finance Minister Michael Wilson, for tax credits up to 20% of a company’s contributions to either mineral exploration or mining-related research conducted at a university. As a result, mining companies can get research done at a fraction of its real cost. In Quebec, thanks to a budget introduced last April, additional tax credits of up to 40% are also available. Companies can either deduct research costs as a part of their exploration programs or do research for half the cost and be eligible for a tax credit. But unlike the ill-fated Scientific Research Tax Credit of a few years ago, it does not allow companies to pass these credits on to other companies. In addition, for most of the industry/university projects of interest to the mining industry, direct federal grants (up to 50% of real costs) are available through the National Science and Engineering Research Council.
Partly as a result of this tax incentive, MERI has excelled at acting as a vehicle through which member universities interact with the industry. In the past three years, the MERI has increased the dollar value of its contracts to $1.7 million in 1987 from $400,000 in 1984. Most of this includes joint company/government funding, but some is funded indirectly through the institute’s program of fundamental research for such organizations as the Geological Survey of Canada and the Quebec Centre for Mineral Research. The list of projects in which MERI scientists are engaged is impressive.
A number of MERI geoscientists contributed to the technical report, on which a $10.6-million financing by Geddes Resources was based last year. That money is being spent exploring the Windy Craggy copper deposit, deep in one of the most rugged parts of northwestern British Columbia. The top-notch technical evaluation of the initial drill hole results by MERI was an important factor in the success of the issue, according to Geddes.
This is just one example of the kind of results this group of 30 PhD geochemists, geophysicists and economic geologists are chalking up against other research institutes in the competition for research funding in Canada. As the Mining Association of Canada and the Mining Industry Technology Council of Canada continue to promote various centres of excellence in mining research at several Canadian universities, the competition for funds will likely increase.
What has made MERI so successful? The institute is made up of an internal staff of about six and an administrative staff of five and draws on the diverse expertise of specialists in such fields as economic geology, geochemistry, petrology, mineralogy, structural geology, geophysics, geostatistics, sedimentology and Quaternary geology from three universities. This year, the institute plans to support three scientific conferences and to increase the output of scientific papers from its members. Other mining companies taking advantage of the expertise at MERI include Prospectors Airways, Aiguebelle, Dumagami Mines, Falconbridge Ltd., LAC Minerals, Louvem Mining, SOQUEM, Cambior and Placer Dome.
Fox, who has spent many years in mineral exploration, mostly with Teck Corp., has the enviable responsibility of assuring meri’s research is solidly applicable to exploration and mining development Fox likes to recount a story. It’s about how fluid inclusions in quartz veins which host gold deposits. “Well, Fox says. “But from the practical mineral explorationist’s point of view, it is nice to know what inclusions indicate a particular quartz vein is barren of gold.”
It is this type of practical interaction between the industry and universities (and the transfer of technology this fosters) which MERI h as cultivated successfully for the past 15 years. It is little wonder then, that MERI was used as a model by Walter Curlook, past president of the Mining Association of Canada, in a speech last fall, when he called for the industry to establish centres for excellence in rock mechanics, mining automation and robotics. Since 1972, MERI has completed more than 350 research projects, worth more than $10 million, in collaboration with industry and government — the same type of collaborative work Curlook would like to see accomplished in the mining- related side of the industry. — 30 —
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