Laboratory Testing & General Mineral Processing Engineering

Laboratory Testing & General Mineral Processing Engineering

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Impact of increased plant throughput on fixed plant costs (1 reply)

A
Millza797979
5 months ago
Millza797979 5 months ago

Hi,

Has anyone got any data for the impact on increased plant throughput on fixed plant costs (labour etc)?

I would have thought that as you go higher throughput (more processing trains etc), that fixed costs would increase slightly, but happy to be proven wrong

Mike
5 months ago
Mike 5 months ago
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First point is to define fixed versus variable costs.  Fixed costs generally being basic infrastructure and corporate/plant overhead.  Variable cost would include utilities, consumables, maintenance, and LABOUR.  

Next we need to clarify increased plant throughput.  If we are talking about a general variation day to day there is not much change.  But a significant and constant step change of 10% or greater would be significant.

Since labour includes maintenance labour, as feed rate increases wear increases and thus maintenance labout increases.  Also operating labour will increase if additional work is required in providing feed or removing tailings.

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