Articles and Columns

Food and feed sampling: balancing ethics and money

Claudia Paoletti

Program Manager, Transformation Unit - TS, European Food Safety Authority – EFSA, Via Carlo Magno 1/A, 43100 Parma, Italy

The hidden costs of poor sampling in the mineral industry

Philippe Davin

Sales Manager, Bulk Solids DPT, Iteca Socadei, Aix-en-Provence, France

Never cry sampling? Denial, denial, denial—pay the price!

Dominique François-Bongarçon

Agoratek International Consultants, Inc.

Introduction

The objective of this contribution is not to add to an already large list of horror examples of hidden economic losses, but rather to raise a cry of alarm about what is experienced as a classical denial of cost-consequential sampling recommendations. A couple of real-world examples borrowed from the mining industry will almost tell the story by themselves.

Sampling quality quantification: the key to support business decisions

Oscar Dominguez

Global Principal Geoscientist QAQC, Resource Centre of Excellence, BHP

The ultimate manager’s argument for representative sampling

D. Aldwin Vogel

Technical & Quality Director, Commodities Global Service Lines, Bureau Veritas, Rotterdam, the Netherlands

It does not matter what is wrong when applying TOS: it is money out of the window every time

Simon Dominy

Camborne School of Mines, Cornwall, UK and Novo Resources Corporation, Perth, Western Australia

Gold segregation in pulps

An underground narrow gold vein (1–2 m width) operation was known to contain coarse gold particles up to 1.2 mm in size, and rarely up to 4 mm. The vein had an average global reserve grade of 17 g/t Au. Monthly reconciliations were up to ±50 % on grade.

Costs of inferior sampling related to calibration for optimal mineral sorting

Chris Robben

SIX-S GmbH, Hinter der Kirche 1A, 22880 Wedel, Germany

This example originates from the mining industry with some parallels to the previous exploration example.

Metal accounting: a direct link between sampling and financial management

Stéphane Brochot

CASPEO, Orléans, France. www.caspeo.net

Editor’s summary

Loosen the TOS stipulations and face the economic consequences

Quentin Dehaine

Senior Researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), Circular Raw Material Hub (Vuorimiehentie 2) 02151, Espoo, Finland

Laboratory test sample representativity: an easily neglected aspect in consignment and its economic impact

Li Huachang and Zhu Mingwei

BGRIMM MTC Technology Co. Ltd, China

Critical sampling in the cement industry: economic drivers

Martin Lischka

HERZOG Maschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, Germany

Incorrect sampling practices always have significant economic consequences—and never more so than where tonnages are large...

Ralph Holmes

Honorary Fellow, CSIRO Mineral Resources, Australia

Case 1. Even a small sampling bias can have a BIG negative economic consequence

Poor sampling procedures for iron ore can lead to preferential exclusion of coarser high grade particles from shipment samples for analysis due to cutter apertures that are too small or cutter speeds that are too high. This leads to a negative bias on Fe content—the result is that shipments are also carrying away substantial lost revenues!

The classic publication on sampling and analysis costs in full-scale mining—Editor’s summary

Pedro Carrasco, Pablo Carrasco and Eduardo Jara

Incorrect sampling operations cause huge economic losses to the mining industry, here illustrated by three industrial cases, which also show that when the Theory of Sampling (TOS) is applied correctly (ensuring unbiased sam-pling and analysis), considerable amounts of money can be saved.