Geometallurgy at EVRAZ KGOK: A Digital Response to Industry Challenges
Geometallurgy is emerging as a defining tool for mineral producers, allowing Russia’s EVRAZ KGOK to stabilize ore quality, reduce losses, and bring a new level of digital control to one of the most complex value chains in mining.
The Only Producer of Its Kind
EVRAZ KGOK, located in the Sverdlovsk region, is the world’s only producer of iron‑vanadium concentrate, sinter, and pellets used in blast‑furnace operations.
As part of EVRAZ, one of the world’s major steelmakers, the facility benefits from an internal supply of iron ore and coking coal.
The company has completed the rollout of its Geometallurgy project, a fully integrated digital system that stabilizes ore quality—such as iron content—throughout the production chain.
Developed together with the technology group Tsifra, the platform ensures consistent characteristics of delivered ore while optimizing plant operations.
Quality Gains and Reduced Losses
The initiative marks a major shift toward smart mining. By unifying ore‑quality management, the system boosts concentrate output, improves its grade, and reduces raw‑material losses associated with magnetic separation processes.
With EVRAZ KGOK ore containing just 14–16% iron, even a fractional improvement translates into significant economic impact. The platform, based on Tsifra’s “Quarry” solution, manages ore flow from extraction to processing, raising process stability and product quality.
Real‑Time Coordination Across the Value Chain
Digitalization has united production control and dispatching into a single environment, accelerating information exchange. MES systems introduced across EVRAZ link mining operations to the processing plant, offering full‑chain quality management and recommending optimal process settings based on ore parameters and plant rules.
Dashboards give employees instant visualization of KPIs across all stages. The mining truck fleet is fully digitized: a dispatch module pinpoints each vehicle, tracks excavator load quality, and coordinates traffic. Locomotive routing is optimized from stockpile to plant, and mine‑planning—daily and weekly—is now automated.
A Long Road to Transformation
In the previous year, EVRAZ KGOK invested $24 million in upgrading its mining fleet, purchasing six new units including four 240‑ton haul trucks and two excavators with bucket capacities of 20 m³ and 12 m³. Students from the local mining college participated in the launch—highlighting the company’s commitment to workforce development.
Since 2018, EVRAZ has deployed digital dispatching systems across all new equipment. The approach aligns with the emerging global “Mine 4.0” standard, which promotes integrated digital control of quality and operations.
